Again, the course of the Nice club is at Cagnes some miles out from the town. It is different from the others of the Riviera, and it has its special advantages. I recall an example of one of them which was the more impressive since it was made on the occasion of my first visit to the course. That was years ago, and we had been held up at Nice for five days and five nights by continuous and heavy rain during the whole of that long time, and it was in February too. Such a spell of Riviera wet seems almost incredible, but it happened, the oldest inhabitants, for the credit of their country, declaring that such a thing had never been before since the world as they knew it had begun. When this kind of thing happens on the Riviera there is only one thing to do, and that is go to the casinos; and it was bad for us in every way that this rain came down like that even if it was good for the Casino Municipal and the others at Nice and for M. Blanc at the adjacent Monte Carlo. When the five days and five nights had been endured, when the heart had grown sick of what happened at the tables, when our thoughts had turned to Sicily and Egypt--for during this period of the flood I had made one voyage (we should call it a voyage though the journey was done by motor-car along that glorious Grand Corniche) to the Riviera of Italy, and there at Bordighera and San Remo (and what a pretty little course it is at Arma di Taggia) found it to be raining still--the sun came out again and the question of golf arose to life. But surely, it seemed, golf would be impossible for some time; courses would need to dry. However, we argued that a stroke with a driving mashie is better than no play, and so we took the car at the Place Masséna and soon were out at Cagnes, and there we played on a course that was as dry as any course need ever be though the rain had been pelting down to within three or four hours before. In one or two hollow places there were little pools of casual water, but otherwise the state of things was such that we might sit upon the grass when the opposition was badly bunkered and needed time for his recovery. Others knew that Nice recovers quickly, for when we were out in the middle of the course we espied some figures a couple of long holes away, and about the attitude of one of them there was something strangely familiar. There was a manner of walking on the course not so much stiff as small and quite precise, and there was a club being carried vertically, head high up as if it were a gun and the carrier were one of a line of infantry. I can recall only one man who sometimes walks with his club like this--not that there is anything against it--and, knowing him, I still regret that opponent had not courage to accept a wager of anything from five francs to fifty that I could name the man at that distance of seven hundred yards, having no knowledge that he I had in mind was on the Riviera at all. It was Mr. Arthur Balfour, ex-Prime Minister, who, chafing for lack of golf after his own five days' shutting up, had motored over from Cannes at the moment that the rain held up.