There comes upon the visitor the sense of being lost, of wandering in a nightmare town, of being entrapped in a maze, of never being able to get out again. They are dreadful streets for an ambush and there is many a corner where an assassin in a cloak must assuredly have waited for the unsuspecting step. They are full of ghosts, of reeling, bellowing men rolling down the steep arm in arm, of half-awakened soldiers, buckling on their arms and hurrying to the clamour at the gate, of clinging, terror-stricken women and of the stalwart prince with his solemn guard. As to the place itself it is a town, tumbled and deranged, made up of rocks and ruins and of melancholy houses of great age. It is a sorrowful town, for Eze is oppressed by the burden of a doleful past and bears on every side traces of its woes and evidences of its manifold disasters. It is a town, it would seem, that can never forget. It is a silent town and desolate. On the occasion of a certain visit the only occupant I came upon was a half-demented beggar who gibbered in an unknown tongue, while the only sound that fell upon the ear was that of a crowing cock. Many of the houses are shuttered close, many are roofless and not a few are without doors. It recalls at every turn the words of Dante of “the steep stairs and the bitter bread.” [Illustration: EZE: ON THE WAY TO THE CASTLE.] [Illustration: EZE: ALL THAT REMAINS OF THE CASTLE.] It is a colourless town for there is nothing to break the ever abiding tint of oyster-shell grey. There are two trees in Eze and, in a back yard, a vine. With these exceptions there is hardly a green leaf within its confines. The only thing that grows in Eze is a monstrous and deformed cactus, a bloated and horrible thing covered with prickles. A botanical ogre rather than a plant it seems to be a survival from an extinct age and to belong to a world over whose plains saurians and other obscene reptiles crawled. This senile and unlovely shrub would appear to be appropriate in some way to the poor, sad town that cannot forget. There is by the way no water in Eze except such rain-water as is collected in tanks by the provident. To obtain water it is necessary to leave the town and journey to the bottom of the path. There, on the road where the carriage of the tourist draws up, is the fountain. Eze too is a place suggestive of craft and secret doings, a town which might have been planned by a man with a guilty conscience, for it is a veritable rabbit warren in which to burrow or to hide while its shuffling lanes, which dodge so cunningly, would seem to have been devised to favour the panting culprit with justice at his heels. Rock crops up everywhere. Certain buildings would seem to be compounded of the native rock below and of worked stones above. Caverns are cut out of the cliff as well as curious paths, although some of these now lead nowhere.