The castle has, however, been disfigured in such a way as to render it pitiable and ridiculous. At some period huge modern windows have been cut in its fearsome walls. These windows, brazen and aggressive, have all the assurance of the windows of a pushing boarding house and to sustain that character are furnished with sun-shutters and lace curtains. The worst phase of this outrage is the cutting away of some of the glorious machicolations in order to make room for the blatant plate glass. This superb old castle, in its present plight, can only be compared to the figure of a sun-tanned and scarred veteran with a helmet on his grey head and a halberd in his hand and on his breast, in the place of the steel cuirass, a parlourmaid’s pinafore trimmed with lace. [Illustration: CAGNES: THE PLACE GRIMALDI.] [Illustration: CAGNES: THE CASTLE.] St. Paul du Var, on the way between Cagnes and Vence, affords a vivid realisation of the fortified town of the middle ages. It is but little altered and that only on the surface. Its fortifications, laid down in 1547, are still quite complete. Its circle of ramparts is unbroken. There are still the old gates, the towers, the bastions and the barbicans. The path along the parapet that the sentry patrolled is undisturbed. One almost expects to hear his challenge for the password. The town is as ready to withstand the attack of an army of bowmen or of halberdiers as it ever was. It might even defy cannon if they were as small and as weak as the old piece of ordnance that still occupies the battery by the main gate. The streets are disposed as they were in the days of the leathern jerkin and the farthingale. There are more houses of obvious antiquity in the place than will be seen in any town of its size in Provence. The hand of improvement has of course passed clumsily over them. Whitewash can wipe out the past and it has done much in this way in St. Paul. If the stone wall of a house has become too rugged and worn it can be covered up with plaster and paint. If the balcony crumbles away its balustrade can be used in the fowl-house and can be replaced by something in cheap iron from a shop in Nice. When the stone chimney falls down a tin stovepipe can fill the void. If the Gothic window be too small it is easy to make a fine square opening that will take lace curtains and be worthy of Bermondsey, and when the oak door, whose black nails have been fumbled over by ten generations of boys and girls, has become shabby a door of deal, painted green and varnished and provided with a brass knocker will make the whole town envious. Still, in spite of all these sorry evidences of advance with the times, the town of St. Paul remains a rare relic worthy (if it were possible) to be placed bodily in a museum, for it is a museum specimen.