Here is nothing of the Nice that English people know; no hotels, no palm trees, no flower-beds, no smart shops.
The town in its eastern part has preserved its look of sixty years ago, the only new constructions being two huge hive-like barracks. It is probably uglier and dirtier than the commercial quarter of Marseilles itself.
The refugees have chosen as their favourite promenade this dingy quarter. Here they meet the soldiers who are coming back or are going to their country, here the Corporation of Nice distributes twice a day free soup to the poor.
The refugees are not often seen in the smart part of the town. The Promenade des Anglais, the Jetée, and the Place Massena are a background too much in contrast with their ragged clothes. They don't care to walk near the well-dressed people lounging in basket-chairs along the promenade.
Most of the refugees have taken with them all they could manage to carry, and it is touching to see how, amongst all their troubles, seldom have they forgotten the little mongrel dog, faithful companion in the happy days before the war.
I was contemplating the refugees, and walking down the irregular pavement of a Genoese-looking street, when a strange sight met my eyes.
Behind a brick wall an extraordinary structure of long wooden bars, osiers, canes, wire-work, and such-like material, emerged and reached a height of perhaps twenty feet.
After a minute's uncertitude, I remembered that I was in Nice, the motherland of the famous Carnival. This complicated construction could only be the skeleton of His Majesty King Carnival himself, the jolly deity who presides at the Riviera winter festivities.
"I thought you always burnt your King Carnival at the end of the season," I said to a native. "How is it that you preserved last year's dummy?"
"This, sir," he answered, "is not the last Roi Carnival, but the next Roi Carnival. Nobody thought we were going to take him round the town this year, but we shall probably have him finished up with canvas and plaster all the same.
"Of course, it will not be one of our great Carnivals; we have no money to throw away this winter, but His Majesty will go round the streets with a German helmet on his head and two upstanding moustaches, and everybody will enjoy more than usual the moment, at the beginning of Lent, when the figure will be set on fire."