There are no two buildings alike. Many may be only a hundred years old,
but, in any case, they are incongruous dwellings with windows at odd
levels and with doors in unexpected places. There are, on the other
hand, buildings which show evidence of greater age and of much
distinction. There are towers which have been converted into common
habitations and relics of mansions of no little pretence. On a few of
these the corbels are still to be seen which once supported the
balconies from which fair ladies scattered flowers upon victorious
troops tramping up to the castle. There are many fine doorways in stone.
Some show traces of the Moorish taste, others belong to the thirteenth
century, while a few display the pointed arch of later years. There are
some beautiful stone windows and many stoutly worked doors of wood and
other odd details which recall a less squalid past. The lounger in the
streets of Eze will meet with crypt-like and cavernous stables for
goats, cellars open to the sky owing to collapse of the roof, and chilly
tunnels without apparent purpose. One or two passages are wide and
vaulted and provided with a long stone bench against the wall. Here, in
the shadow, soldiers will have sat to clean their arms and old men to
gossip.
The public buildings are, of course, few. The _Mairie_ is rather
pretentiously humble and is the least authoritative building I have ever
seen. The post office clings precariously to the side of a steep lane,
the Rue du Brek, and looks out upon a wall of rock covered with cactus.
It seems incongruous that from this half-unconscious place it is
possible both to telegraph and telephone. There is a dejected café but
it is closed.
The church is of little interest. It was enlarged and restored—that is
to say spoiled—in 1765. It contains, besides a font of the sixteenth
century and an old cross, a painting ascribed to the seventeenth century
in the left lower corner of which is a picture of Eze as it was. The
castle in the picture is intact, is solid, square and arrogant looking.
It quite overwhelms the jumbled-up little brown-red town at its foot.
From the top of the tower floats a red flag with a white cross on it.
The castle is on the highest point of the town and is reached by a path
fashioned out of the rock. This is a path with indeed a story to tell,
if only it could utter it; if it could but speak of the footsteps it has
listened to—the halting feet of men led up to be judged, the trembling
feet of men led down to be hanged, the heavy tread of the well-laden
robber, the nervous step of the spy, the rustle of the foot of the
damosel. Of this castle of the Lords of Eze nothing remains but a wall
and a fragment of a vaulted chamber. In the castle yard is a wretched,
shamefaced hut on which is painted “Bar des Touristes.” It is happily
derelict and a victim to the general coma which has spread over Eze, for
it is as out of place as a roulette table in a nunnery.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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