Alone By Norman Douglas













































































 -  And how comes
it that the eyesore has not yet been detected and uprooted by those
keen-sighted authorities that - Page 11
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And How Comes It That The Eyesore Has Not Yet Been Detected And Uprooted By Those Keen-Sighted Authorities That Perform Such Wonders In Making The Visitor Feel At Home, And Hush Up With Miraculous Dexterity Everything In The Nature Of A Public Scandal?

In exemplification whereof, let me tell a trivial Riviera tale. There was an Englishwoman here, one of those indestructible modern ladies who breakfast off an ether cocktail and half a dozen aspirins and feel all the better for it, and who, one day, found herself losing rather heavily at the tables. "Another aspirin is going to turn my luck," she thought, and therewith swallowed surreptitiously her last tabloid of the panacea. Not unobserved, however; for straightway two elegant gentlemen - they might have been Russian princes - pounced upon her and led her to that underground operating-room where a kindly physician is in perennial attendance. He brushed aside her explanations.

"It would be a thousand pities for so charming a lady to poison herself. But since you wish to take that step, why choose the Casino which has a reputation to keep up? Are there not hotels - - "

"I tell you it was only aspirin."

"Alas, we are sufficiently familiar with that tale! Now, Madam, let us not lose a moment! It is a question of life and death."

"Aspirin, I tell you - - "

"Kindly submit, or the three of us will be obliged to employ force."

The stomach-pump was produced.

It is the drawback of all sea-side places that half the landscape is unavailable for purposes of human locomotion, being covered by useless water. Mentone is more unfortunate than most of them, for its Hinterland is so cloven and contorted that unless you keep on the main roads, or content yourself with short but pleasant strolls, you will soon find all progress barred by some natural obstruction. And one really cannot walk along the esplanade all day long, though it is worth while, once in a lifetime, continuing that promenade as far as Cap Martin, if only in memory of the inspiration which Symonds drew therefrom. Who, he asks - who can resist the influence of Greek ideas at the Cape St. Martin? Anybody can, nowadays. The place is encrusted with smug villas of parvenus (wherein we include the Empress Eugenie), to say nothing of that preposterous hotel at the very point, which disfigures the country for leagues around.

On other occasions you may find your way towards evening up to Gorbio and stay for supper, provided you do not mind being cheated. Or wander further afield, over Sospel to Breil by the old path - note the lavender: they make a passable perfume of it - or else to Moulinet (famous for bad food and a mastodontic breed of mosquitoes) and thence along the stream - note the bushes of wild box - and over a wooded ridge to the breezy heights of Peira Cava, there to dream away the daylight under the pines. These are summer rambles. At present the snow lies deep.

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