SOSPEL lies at the bottom of a vast basin-shaped valley by the banks of the ever-chattering Bevera river. The sides of the valley are lined from base to summit with olive trees. It is not a pretty valley, for the green of the olive, being sad and wan, suggests rather the shabby dreariness of old age. In this sombre hollow Sospel appears as a patch of chocolate-brown. The valley is so immense and the town so small that it is little more than a dark stain at the bottom of a huge bowl. Sospel has fallen far from its high estate. It was once domineering and haughty and now it has become so humble and so insignificant. It once had the splendour of a soft-petalled rose, but it has dwindled in these days to a mere pinch of dry and shrivelled leaves. In Roman times it was a town of importance. It was a military station fully garrisoned and strongly fortified. It represented the mailed fist of Rome thrust defiantly into the land of Gaul. Those who are learned in these matters state that the lines of the Roman ramparts can still be traced about the outskirts of Sospel, but they are no longer visible to the eyes of the vulgar. [Illustration: SOSPEL: THE OLD BRIDGE.] After the glory of Rome had passed away Sospel still remained a commanding city and, throughout the Middle Ages and for century after century, it held its place as a most influential town in this domain of France. It became the seat of a bishop as early as 1337 and Alberti, the historian of Sospel,[54] tells of its high clerics, of its consuls, of its judges and of its other exalted men. In the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries it was a city with many thousands of inhabitants. It was surrounded by high walls, had five gates and many strong towers. It could boast of no fewer than one hundred and sixty-two shops and two _monti di pietà_. It had a cathedral and as many as twenty churches and chapels, fifteen squares, many convents and monasteries, an academy and a college for lawyers.[55] A great fair was held every year on St. Luke’s Day in October in the Piazza di San Michele, for Sospel was a centre of commerce and of industry for miles around. The town has seen much trouble and has endured periods of stress and times of calamity. Indeed so sad have been some phases of its history that, although it can boast of years of flamboyant glory, it is probable that its happiest days are now, when it has become a village of no account. About the end of the eighth century Sospel was almost entirely destroyed by fire. In 1516 it was ravaged by the Gascons and reduced, for the time, to a smouldering waste. In the sixteenth century the town became prominent as a place of horror by reason of the wholesale burning of heretics in the Piazza di San Michele.