One of the most exciting days in the history of Villefranche happened in the year 1523 when “The Great Ship” was launched and when the people either screamed themselves hoarse with elation or were rendered dumb by surprise. This Leviathan of the Deep was built by the Knights Templars. The dimensions of the fearsome vessel have probably grown with the passage of time, but quite temperate historians describe her as possessed of six decks and as furnished with a powder store, a chapel and a bakehouse. She carried a crew of 300 men. Writers with a riper imagination assert that she was covered with lead and that so terrific was her weight that she could sink fifty galleys. Things grow as the centuries pass. It would be of interest to learn to what proportions the ephemeral image of the Virgin, on the opposite cape, will have attained in the next four hundred years. Villefranche and Cap de St. Hospice are both concerned in the astounding journey that was made by the dead body of Paganini. [Illustration: A ROAD IN BEAULIEU.] Paganini, the immortal violinist, died at Nice on May 27th, 1840, in the Rue de la Préfecture in a house which has been already indicated (page 25). He died of tuberculosis at the age of 56. His religious opinions appear to have been indistinct and his religious observances even less pronounced. In the closing hours of his life he was denied or failed to receive the last rites of the Church and, after his death, the clergy refused to allow his body to be buried in consecrated ground. On the day following his decease the coffin was deposited in the cellar of a house near by, a house that stands at the junction of the Rue de la Préfecture and the Rue Ste. Réparate.[24] The cellar was in the possession of a friendly hatter. The body then appears to have been removed to an “apartment” in a hospital at Nice, but the facts at this point in the narrative are confused.[25] Paganini’s son took action against the bishop for refusing to permit the body to be buried within the pale of the Church. In this action young Paganini failed. He appealed against the decision of the clergy and the matter was finally referred to the Papal Court at Rome. Pending judgment the body was taken to Villefranche and placed in a lazaretto there. In about a month the smell emitted by the corpse was complained of and accordingly the coffin was taken out of the building and placed on the open beach near the water’s edge. This gave great distress to the friends of the dead artist and so one night a party of five of them took up the coffin and carried it by torch-light round the bay to the point of Cap de St. Hospice. Here they buried it close to the sea and just below the old round tower which still stands on this spit of land. Over the coffin was placed a slab of stone. All this happened within a year of the maestro’s death.