Page:Book of the Riviera.djvu/216

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172
THE RIVIERA

she contrived to have a cottage built out of the ruins for herself and for her husband, who had sunk into dotage.

The brother of the great orator and of Louise de Cabris was André Boniface, Deputy to the Estates-General for the nobility of Limoges. His excesses at table, and his corpulence, procured for him the nickname of Mirabeau Tonneau. Gabriel Honoré reprimanded him for ascending the tribune when he was drunk. "Why," he replied, "you have monopolised all the vices of the family, and have left but this one to me." "In any other family but ours," he said, "I would pass as a disgrace. In mine, I am its most respectable member." He emigrated to Germany. An epigram was composed on him:—

"L’horreur de l'eau, l'amour du vin
 Le retiendront au bord du Rhin."

Grasse, as already said, is an admirable centre for excursions, and no excursion is finer than that up the Gorge of the Loup. It is not often that commercial enterprise adds to picturesqueness of scene; but this it has at the entrance to the Gorge. There the railway makes a bold sweep over a really beautiful viaduct, this itself an addition to the scene. But further, in order to supply electric force to Nice for its trams and lighting, a canal has been bored in the precipice on the right bank of the Loup, at a great elevation, to bring the water from an upper fall, so as, by means of a turbine, to accumulate the required power; and the falls of this stream at the opening of the ravine are of great beauty.

It is hard to decide which is most beautiful, the view of the mouth of the ravine, with the waterfall foaming down the cliff beside it, as seen from the hill-side as the