A curiously small life must have been that of these little towns under the _ancien régime_, when the time of warfare was over. It was made up of petty quarrels, of scandals and gossip. Even in the cathedral, the bishop and the dean and the chapter were at loggerheads over the merest trifles—whether two or three _coups_ of the censer should be given to the bishop, whether a bow to him should extend to the hams of the canons. Perhaps the funniest quarrel was about the patronage of the diocese. The bishop issued a pastoral, in which he announced that he had constituted S. Honoratus the patron of the clergy of Grasse, and did not say “with the assent of the chapter.” Whereupon the incensed chapter cut the name of Honoratus out of their calendar, and refused to celebrate his festival. Some of the bishops were engaged in incessant strife. When one died, to him might be applied the epigram written on Clement XI.:—
“A vermibus terræ consumendus in tumulo, A vermibus ecclesiæ jam consumptus in throno.”
“The happy little town of Grasse,” says Lenthéric, “seems to be the very home of flowers and perfumes. Its forests or olives furnish the finest and sweetest oil of Provence; its groves of oranges and lemons yield at the same time flowers in abundance and fruit in maturity. About it are roses, jessamine, mint, heliotrope, Parma violets, mignonette, cultivated over wide tracts, as are also everywhere the common pot-herbs. The transformation of these natural products into perfumery has become the predominant industry of the district; and the neighbourhood of the Alps allows of the addition to this domestic flora of a thousand wild flowers and herbs—thyme, lavender, rosemary—all to be gathered close at hand.”
History—Ægitna—Quintus Opimus—Admiral Matthews takes Ile Ste. Marguerite—La Californie—Climate—S. Cassien—Arluc—Legend—La Napoule—Antibes—The Terpon stone—Cult of rude stones—Utriculares—Lerins—Ste. Marguerite—The Man in the Iron Mask—Mattioli—Fabricated pedigree for Napoleon—Marshal Bazaine: his escape—S. Honorat—The stand made against Predestinarianism—S. Augustine—Lerins a home of culture—Decay—Suppressed—Springs of fresh water in the sea.
CANNES does not possess much of a history. It was but a fishing village occupying a rock above a little port, built about a ruined castle and a church, when “invented” by Lord Brougham, as already related.