“There’s a new coast road going from Saint-Raphaël to Saint-Tropez. All along this magnificent avenue cut through the forest and with a view over the uniquely beautiful coast, they’re trying to create winter resorts. The first one planned for Saint-Aygulf is particularly interesting: in the middle of a fir forest which stretches down to the sea, there are wide tracks going off in all directions. Not one single house, nothing but the layout of future streets running throughout the trees. There are crossroads, boulevards, squares. They’ve even put up metal plates marking their names: boulevard Ruysdael, boulevard Rubens, boulevard Van Dyck, boulevard Claude-Lorrain. You may be wondering: Why all these painters? It’s because the Company, like God himself before lighting the sun, said “This is going to be a resort for artists!”
The Company! Nowhere else in the world would the full implications of that word be understood: the hopes, the risks, the profits, the losses, along the shores of the Mediterranean. The Company! A mysterious term, fateful, profound, and misleading.
Here, however, the Company seems to realizing its hopes for it’s already got some buyers, and among the finest artists. You can read, here and there: plot bought by Monsieur Carolus Duran; plot bought by Monsieur Clairin; plot bought by Mademoiselle Croizette, etc. etc. But all the same, who knows? The Companies on the Mediterranean aren’t having much luck.
There’s nothing more amusing than this wild speculation followed by spectacular crashes. Someone’s won ten thousand francs, buys ten million plots at one franc a meter, and offers them for sale at twenty francs. They lay out boulevards, lay on water, set up a gasworks , and wait for the customers. The customer fails to turn up; bankruptcy does.”
Afloat – Guy de Maupassant – 1888 – translated by Douglas Parmée
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