And builds imaginary Rome anew.'"
"Ah, yes," said Mrs. Trescott, "the Romans, the Romans, how dreamy they were! They always remind me of those lines:
"'Then sing, ye birds, sing, sing a joyous song!
And let the young lambs bound
As to the tabor's sound,
The primal sympathy,
Which, having been, must ever be!'"
This finished the bridge. As we had no idea what she meant, even Inness deserted it, and we all went onward to the Bone Caverns. The caverns were dark hollows in the cliff some distance above the road. From the entrance of one of them issued a cloud of dust; the Professor was in there digging.
"Let us ascend at once," said Mrs. Trescott, enthusiastically. "I wish to stand in the very abode of the primitive man."
But it was something of a task to get her up; there was always a great deal of loose drapery about Mrs. Trescott, which had a way of catching on everything far and near. With her veil, her plumes, her lace shawl, her long watch-chain, her dangling fan, her belt bag and scent bottle, her parasol and basket, it was difficult to get her safely through any narrow or bushy place. But to-day Verney gallantly undertook the feat: he knew the advantages of propitiating the higher powers.
Men were quarrying the face of the Red Rocks at a dizzy height, hanging suspended in mid-air by ropes in order to direct the blasting; below, the patient horses were waiting to convey the great blocks of stone to the town, and destroy, by their daily procession, the last traces of the Julia Augusta.
"I hope these rocks are porphyry," said Janet, gazing upward; "it is such a lovely name."
"Yes, they are," said the unblushing Inness. "The Troglodytes, whose homes are beneath, were fond of porphyry. They were very æsthetic, you know."
We now reached the entrance of one of the caverns and looked in.
"The Troglodytes," continued Inness, "were the original, really original, proprietors of Mentone. They lived here, clad in bear-skins, and their voices are said to have been not sweet. See Pliny and Strabo. The bones of their dinners left here, and a few of their own (untimely deaths from fighting with each other for more), have now become the most precious treasures of the scientific world, equalling in richness the never-to-be-sufficiently-prized-and-investigated kitchen refuse of the Swiss lakes."
But the Professor, overhearing something of this frivolity at the sacred door, emerged from the hole in which he had been digging, and, covered with dust, but rich in the possession of a ball and socket joint of some primeval animal, came to the entrance, and forcibly, if not by force, addressed us:
"At a recent period it has been discovered that these five caverns in this limestone rock – "
"Alas, my porphyry!" murmured Janet.
" – contain bones of animals mixed with flint instruments imbedded in sand. The animals were the food and the flint instruments the weapons of a race of men who must have existed far back in prehistoric times. This was a rich discovery; but a richer was to come. In 1872 a human skeleton, all but perfect, a skeleton of a tall man, was discovered in the fourth cavern, surrounded by bones which prove its great antiquity – which prove, in fact, almost beyond a doubt, that it belonged to – the —Paleolithic epoch!" And the Professor paused, really overcome by the tremendous power of his own words.
But I am afraid we all gazed stupidly enough, first at him, then into the cave, then at him again, with only the vaguest idea of "Paleolithic's" importance. I must except Verney; he knew more. But he had gone inside, and was now digging in the hole in his turn to find flints for Janet.
Mrs. Trescott, who was our bone-master (she had studied anatomy, and highly admired "form"), asked if the skeleton had been "painted in oils."
Miss Elaine hoped that they buried it again "reverently," and "in consecrated ground."
The Professor gazed at them in turn; he literally could not find a word for reply.
Then I, coming to the rescue, said: "I am very dull, I know, but pity my dulness, and tell me why the skeleton was so important, and how they knew it was so old."
The poor man, overcome by such crass ignorance, gazed at his ball and socket joint and at our group in silence. Then, in a spiritless voice, he said, "The bones surrounding the skeleton were those of animals now extinct – animals that existed at a period heretofore supposed to have been before that of man; but by their presence here they prove a contemporary, and we therefore know that he existed at a much earlier age of the world's history than we had imagined."
Verney now gave Janet the treasures he had found – some pieces of flint about an inch long, rudely pointed at one end. "These," he said, "are the knives of the primitive man."
"They are very disappointing," said Janet, surveying them as they lay in the palm of her slender gray glove, buttoned half-way to the elbow.
"Did you expect carved handles and steel blades?" I said, smiling.
"And here are some nummulites," pursued Verney, taking a quantity of the round coin-like shells from his pocket. "You might have a necklace made, with the nummulites above and the flints below as pendants."
"And label it prehistoric; it would be quite as attractive as preraphaelite," said Inness. "I don't know what you think," he continued, turning to Verney, "but to me there is nothing so ugly as the way some of the girls – generally the tall ones – are getting themselves up nowadays in what they call the preraphaelite style – a general effect of awkward lankness as to shape and gown, a classic fillet, hair to the eyebrows, and a gait not unlike that which would be produced by having the arms tied together behind at the elbows. If your Botticelli is responsible for this, his canvases should be demolished."
Verney laughed; he was at heart, I think, a strong preraphaelite both of the present and the past; but how could he avow it when a reality so charming and at the same time so unlike that type stood beside him? Janet's costumes were not at all preraphaelite; they were American-French.
We left the Red Rocks, and went slowly onward along the sea-shore towards home. Miss Elaine, having first taken me aside to ask if I thought it "quite proper," had challenged Inness to a rapid walk, and soon carried him away from us and out of sight. On our way we passed the St. Louis brook, where the laundresses were at work in two rows along the stream, each kneeling at the edge in a broad open basket like a boat, and bending over the low pool, alternately soaping and beating her clothes with a flat wooden mallet. It was a picturesque sight – the long rows of figures in baskets, the heads decked with bright-colored handkerchiefs. But to a housewifely mind like my own the idea which most forcibly presented itself was the small amount of water. Of a celebrated trout fisherman it was once said that all he required was a little damp spot, and forthwith he caught a trout; and the Mentone laundresses seem to consider that only a little damp spot is needed for their daily labors.
But in truth they cannot help themselves; the crying fault of Mentone is the want of water. A spring is more precious than the land itself, and is divided between different proprietors for stated periods of each day. The poor little rills do a dozen tasks before they reach the laundresses and the beach. The beautiful terrace vegetation which clothes the sides of the mountains is supported by an elaborate and costly system of tanks and watercourses which would dishearten an American proprietor at the outset. The Mentone laundresses work for wages which a New World laundress would scorn; but there is one marked difference between them and between all the French and Italian working-people and those of America, and that is that among these foreigners there seems to be not one too poor to have his daily bottle of wine. We saw the necks of these bottles peeping from the rough dinner-baskets of the laundresses, and afterwards from those also of the quarry-men, vine-dressers, olive-pickers, and lemon-gatherers. It was an inexpensive "wine of the country"; still, it was wine.
The sun was now sinking into the water, and exquisite hues were stealing over the soft sea. The picturesque Mediterranean boats with lateen-sails were coming towards home, and one whose