As we walked rapidly towards the Rue Paradis, our masterful friend gave us particulars of the road.
"It is," he said, "the route de Levens. Monsieur knows it--well, no matter! They say it was built hundreds of years before the Romans came. One ascends this bank of the river until the road divides, then to the left through the village of St. André. After two kilometres one finds one's self in a gorge--the cliffs on either side of many hundred feet. There are places where the sunlight never enters. It is an ascent always--follows La Tourette, a fortified village high above the road on the right. Then the road becomes dangerous. There are places between Levens and St. Jean de la Rivière where to make a false step is to fall a thousand feet. One hears the Vesubie roaring far below, but the river is invisible--it is dark even at midday. The great cliffs are unbroken by a tree or a pathway. This is the Col du Dragon, a great height. In descending one passes through a long tunnel cut in the rock, and that is half-way. At St. Jean de la Rivière you will find yourselves in the valley of the Vesubie. Here, again, one mounts continually by the side of the river. The road is a dangerous one, for there are landslips and chutes of stone--at times the whole roadway is swept down into the river."
The man, with the quick gestures of his people, described all so graphically that I could see the road and its environments as he traversed it in imagination.
"Before long, however, one sees Venanson," he went on, "a church and village on a point of rock far above the river. At a turn of the road Venanson is left behind; and in front, three thousand feet above the sea, surrounded by snow mountains, lies St. Martin Lantosque. The air is cold, the people are different from the Niçois--it is another world. These gentlemen have a wonderful ride before them, and there is a moon. If I were a younger man--but there! I am married, and have two children. Also I am afraid of my wife. Mon Dieu! I make no concealment of it. My comrades know that I fear nothing that comes in the way of our business; but I tremble before my wife--a little woman as high as my elbow. What will you? A tongue!--_Pstt_!"
And with his forefinger he described in the air the descent of a fork of lightning.