From this point the town becomes merely incoherent. It expresses itself in terms of delirium. There are streets that go up and down like the hump of a camel, streets that form parts of circles and streets that form parts of squares. A map of all the lanes, passages, stairs and tunnels of Gorbio would look like all the diagrams of Euclid mixed up together. The surface of the town reproduces the undulations of the waves of the sea. A man walking before you disappears and appears again as if he walked on the ocean. The path may now be on a level with the belfry of the church and now with the main door. Indeed the church goes up and down as if it were a pier seen from the deck of a rolling ship. It would seem as if, at one time, Gorbio had been in a plastic condition, like a town made of wax, and that it had then been ruffled by a hot and mighty wind and its streets and foundations thrown into ripples which have hardened into stone. It would also seem as if this convulsion had had the effect of mixing up the component parts of a mediæval town with more modern structures. Thrown up on the summit of Gorbio is the square tower of the old castle; but it is so fused with stables and poor dwellings that, but for its exquisite window, it might be a hayloft over a cow-house. Mule-paths are mixed up with vaulted passages and narrow lanes with cellar stairs, a prison wall with a grilled window has become the wall of a cottage, bits of a feudal fortress have been melted up with hovels, a fine arch of stone leads to a donkey-shed, the portal of a chapter house to a mean kitchen, while the hall of a _palazzo_ has become a pen for goats. Forever above this jumble of buildings there rises, like the steam from a witches’ cauldron, the smell of a stable of so horrible a kind that not even a Hercules could cleanse it. [Illustration: A STREET IN ST. AGNES.] Gorbio is a town of five hundred and fifty inhabitants, placed at a height of 1,425 feet above the sea. It is a very ancient place, for Dr. Müller finds an account of its castle as far back as the year 1002. The town has had its full share of misfortunes and horrors. It has been possessed, in turn, by the Counts of Ventimiglia, by the Genoese, by the Grimaldi and by the great family of the Lascaris. Each change of tenancy meant a more or less liberal amount of bloodshed. At one time, namely in 1257, it was the property of the beautiful Beatrix of Provence, she who was platonically beloved by the troubadour of Eze (page 126). It may be sure that under the rule of this gentle lady Gorbio had at least some days of peace. It is no wonder that with all its troubles and with all the assaults it has received it has been battered out of shape and has become, in its old age, so very queer.