The lizard ideal of sun and warmth, the human ideal of unlimited leisure, of unbroken views of ocean, sky, mountains, trees, make Menton a promised paradise for all when reaching their troisième âge they try to follow the tradition of stopping suddenly their pursuits of twenty, thirty, forty years. This arrest of habit often coincides with a permanent arrest of the heart or, less drastic, the retirement of some physical and mental faculties; also, a literal re-tire-ment: a fatigue on entering the promised paradise, on gazing at the view of ocean and mountain. The illusion of, the obeisance to, time, from birth to death in oneself and after the deaths of others (and before their birth), dispose human beings to live their lives in a prison of images. Attaining middle and old age, feeling that he has ‘arrived’ somewhere, as if he has taken a life-train from one place to another, a man feels entitled to enjoy the prospect of ‘looking back’, of ‘surveying’ his supposedly panoramic life, of resting on a ‘summit’ to enjoy breathing and eating and sleeping in peace and quiet now that he has ‘passed his working life’ and ‘reached’ a ‘third age’.
