readers, in that spirit of delightful perversity that characterises the
sex, should go there and spoil the credit of the pension. I could not
endure the _table d'hote_ there for many days. An ugly woman is, or may be,
restful for the eye when her face is in repose--not when she is chewing
tough beef or munching an apple. Besides, Lent was passed.

When I was in Rome there appeared in a comic paper at the beginning of Lent
the picture of a very stout lady, who thus addressed her spouse. "Hubby,
dear! you haven't kissed me." "Can't, love," he replies, "_fat_ is
forbidden in Lent." Ugliness was uncongenial to me in radiantly beautiful
Nice, and in sparkling Easter--so I packed my Gladstone bag and went
further.

The snow still lying on the crests of the Maritime Alps and the
intermediate ranges broken into fantastic forms, the lovely range of red
porphyry Esterel to the south, with the intensely blue sea drawing a
thread of silver about its base, together made a picture of incomparable
loveliness.

The sun was so hot that the horses had already assumed their summer hats.
"A good man is merciful to his beast," and the good-hearted peasants of
the Riviera and Provence, thinking that their horses must suffer from the
burning heat of the sun, provide, them with straw hats, very much the same
sort of hats as girls wear, adorned also with ribbons and rosettes, but to
suit the peculiarity of formation of the horse's head, two holes are cut in
the hat through which the ears are drawn. The effect is comical when you
are being driven in a carriage with a pair of horses before you wearing
straw hats, and their ears protruding, one on each side, like the horns in
the helmets of mediaeval German knights. One lovely glimpse of the sea I got
that I shall never forget. The blue sea was in the background gleaming;