This picture is very difficult to realise for the Rue Longue is now a humble street that the fastidious would probably call a slum. There are one or two little shops in it, but the houses are, for the most part turned into tenements for a very densely packed population. The buildings are of stone covered unhappily with plaster; but they nearly all show traces of an exalted past. There are many fine entries of stone with either a pointed or a rounded arch and a few windows which recall better days. The typical house has an arched doorway from which ascends a stone stair whose summit is lost in darkness. It leads obviously to the door of the dwelling, the ground floor being devoted, in old days, to stables or offices. There is in the Rue Longue a shop of the mediæval type, such as has been described in the account of St. Paul du Var (page 101). Over the portal of one house is the date 1542 and over another that of 1543. The house No. 123 was the palace of the princes of Monaco. It bears the initials of Honorius II and the date 1650. Within is a fine stone stair with a vaulted ceiling. Among the more picturesque streets of the town may be mentioned the Rue du Vieux Château, the Rue de la Côte and the Rue Lampedouze. The Rue Longue ends at the main gate of the town—the Porte St. Julien. The gate itself has been modernised and is represented only by an archway of a quite unassuming type. Leading up from this portal to the old cemetery is a wall in which are traces of the _enceinte_ of the old fortress. The stronghold, built (Dr. Müller states) between 1492 and 1505, occupied the summit of the hill on which the old cemetery now stands. Here can be seen portions of the castle wall which have become incorporated with the structure of this strangely placed burial ground. A flight of steps from the Rue Longue leads to St. Michael’s Church. The original church was built in 1619, but was almost entirely destroyed by the great earthquake of 1887, after which date the present church was constructed. It is an ambitious building in an indefinite “classic” style and presents no features of interest. The same may be said of the two other churches in the old town—those of the Pénitents Blancs and of the Pénitents Noirs. The gallant old fort that, in the seventeenth century, guarded Mentone on the side of the sea has been almost engulfed in the building of the new pier. It is now merely a grey, patched-up ruin, standing on the rocks by the water’s edge and ignominiously held up behind by the officious pier. Its little barred windows are curious, while on its summit can still be seen some traces of its sentry towers. ----- [52] “The Rivieras,” London, 1897, p. 82. [53] “A Winter at Mentone.” [Illustration: MENTONE: RUE LONGUE.] XXXVII THE FIRST VISITORS TO THE RIVIERA