An English gentleman has bought one of these properties, the Palazzo of Orengo, near Cap Murtola, and renovated it in first-rate style. The mansion occupies a site so prominent as to command a view of Mentone. With the grounds and some water privileges, it was a cheap purchase. Even with cost of repairs, it was a prodigious bargain. Politely invited to the palazzo, we went in a hired carriage from Mentone, but unexpectedly found that it could not take us further than a point on the high-road overlooking the house, two hundred feet beneath. A walk down, and the use of a donkey up for Madame, made all easy. I was of course interested in the interior of the structure, with its white marble stairs, its inlaid floors, and loggia off the drawing-room, in the upper floor of the mansion. In every old palazzo two things appear to have been essential, a draw-well and a loggia. The draw-well is here situated at one side of the marble-paved entrance-hall; being, however, tastefully enclosed, it does not appear out of place. Without a loggia, it would be scarcely possible to exist in the heats of summer. At Orengo, the loggia is a square apartment, open on two sides, the roof being supported on pillars. Seated in this shady retreat, the family enjoy the pleasures of the open air, with a view of the gardens beneath and the adjacent sea-beach. A flight of steps on the side next the sea leads down to the original entrance to the grounds from the old Roman road, here distinctly traced, about twelve feet wide. Conducted over the gardens, I had the pleasure of being shewn a variety of trees and shrubs natural to a tropical climate, and rarely seen in the open air in Europe. During the short ramble, I learned some facts regarding the antiquity of the water channels which one observes everywhere, and of the punctilious way in which custom and legal rights guard the privileges of the proprietors. The water for the grounds is led from a torrent, which at certain times turns a mill for pressing oil from the olives. In consideration of the priceless value of water, something like a grudge was felt that there was somewhere hereabouts a subterranean river which had its outlet in the sea, where it could be seen boiling up and running to waste. Nobody could tell where it came from. All that could be conjectured was that it found its way through the limestone rocks from some place far distant, it might be a hundred miles off. If that river could be but tapped, and diverted to some useful purpose, what visions of wealth for the neighbourhood! Perhaps, thought I, this may come about. What a prize for the Mentonians if they could manage to tap and impound a subterranean and ever-running river! A gold mine would be nothing to it. [Illustration: Palazzo of Orengo.]