It will be understood from the foregoing explanations, that furnished lodgings, in the English sense of the term, do not exist at Mentone. There are no houses in which you can hire one or two apartments by the week, and be waited on by the servants of the keeper. That plan of living is not according to French usage. The tickets hung out of _Appartement Meublé_, signify a furnished suite of rooms without service, and where the dwellers are left to their own resources. Those who wish to be free of the trouble of independent housekeeping, go into a pension, which suits the gregariousness of the French character. Many English will feel this deficiency to be an inconvenience. It often passed through my mind, that lodging-houses on the English system would answer, and more particularly if that peculiar species of lodging-house which prevails at Brighton were introduced. There, the lodging-houses called ‘Mansions’—as, for example, the Belvidere Mansion—are ready to let apartments and supply food and service at so much a day, each lodger being served in his own apartment, if he pleases; or they will allow lodgers to purchase what they require for themselves. Nowhere, in all my ramblings, have I found any lodging-house system so thoroughly convenient and agreeable as this, and it would be a great recommendation to Mentone if it had something of the kind which we could point to. I may offer another remark. _Propriétaires_ at Mentone confine their building speculations too exclusively to detached and costly villas, and to tall houses in the main street. Visitors who wish to hire dwellings do not all incline to pay a high rent for a villa, or to live over shops and have windows looking into a dusty street, noisy with traffic. Many would prefer, if it could be got, a house in a connected row, in a sheltered and retired situation, with a southern exposure—such as may be obtained in one of the crescents at Bath, or the famed _Lung’ Arno_ at Pisa. Instead of setting down villas in all sorts of odd spots, some facing this way and some that, and often one overshadowing and interrupting the view of another, how much better would it be for _propriétaires_ to unite, if at all possible, in erecting a score of houses not too high, on the plan of a crescent, in some choice situation, and which houses, while commodious as dwellings, would be hailed as a tranquil and sunny refuge for invalids. CHAPTER IV.