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CHAPTER VIII

S. RAPHAEL AND FRÉJUS

Rapid Rise—An exposed spot, unsuitable as a winter resort—Napoleon here embarks for Elba: his journey from Fontainebleau—The via Aurelia—Fréjus—Choking up of the harbour—Roman remains—The Cathedral—Agricola—Monuments—S. Hilary Sieyès; sans phrases—Désauguier—The Caveau—His Carnival Lay—Some of his jokes.

A FEW years ago S. Raphael was a fishing village about an old Templar church. There were in it but a couple of hundred poor folk. Then some speculators cast their eyes on the place, and calculating, not unreasonably, on the lack of intelligence of visitors from the North, resolved on making it into a winter sanatorium. They bought out the fisher families, and set to work to build hotels and lay out esplanades and gardens.

Now any person with a grain of sense in his head has but to look at the map to see that S. Raphael is the very last place on the coast suitable as a winter resort. It lies between two great humps of mountains, the Chaine des Maures and the Estérel. It has before it the ever-shallowing Gulf of Fréjus, that stretches back into alluvial deposit and pestiferous morasses—open to the north; and down this bare, unwholesome plain roars and rages the Mistral. It has blown the sea out of the Bay to the distance of two miles. It is enough, entering the ears, to drive the frail lungs out of the breast betwixt the teeth.

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