But At The End Of The Ballet, She Rose, And Bidding The Girl
Wait Her Return, She Vanished In The Direction Of The Gaming-Rooms.
She
may merely have gone to look on at a spectacle which, dulness for
dulness, was no worse than that of the musical comedy, and I have no
proof that she risked her money there.
The girl sat through the next
act, and then in a sudden fine alarm, like that of a bird which, from no
visible cause, starts from its perch, she took flight, and I hope she
found her aunt, or her mother's friend, quietly sleeping on one of those
seats in the atrium. It was one of those tacit, eventless dramas which
in travel are always offering themselves to your witness. They begin in
silence, and go quietly on to their unfinish, and leave you steeped in
an interest which is life-long, whereas a story whose end you know soon
perishes from your mind. Art has not yet learned the supreme lesson of
life, which is never a tale that is told within the knowledge of the
living.
Nowhere, I think, is the "sweet security of streets" felt more than in
Monte Carlo. Whether the control of that good Administration of the
Casino reaches to the policing of the place in other respects or not, I
cannot say, but one walks home at night from the theatre of the Casino
with the same sense of safety that one enjoys under that paternal roof.
At eleven o'clock all Monte Carlo sleeps the sleep of the innocent and
the just in the dwellings of the citizens and permanent residents;
though it cannot be denied that there appear to be late suppers in the
hotels and restaurants surrounding the Casino, which the iniquitous may
be giving to the guilty. Away from the flare of their bold lights the
town reposes in a demi-dark, and presents to the more strenuous fancy
the effect of a mezzotint study of itself; by day it is a group of
wash-drawings near to, and farther off, of water-colors, very richly and
broadly treated. I could not insist too much upon this notion with the
reader who has never been there, or has not received picture
postal-cards from sojourning correspondents. These would afford him a
portrait of the chief features and characteristics of the place not too
highly flattered, for in fact it would be impossible for even a picture
postal-card to exaggerate its beauty. They will besides convey one of
the few convincing proofs that in spite of the Blanc Casino and the
French Republic the Prince of Monaco is still a reigning sovereign, for
the postage-stamps bear the tastefully printed head of that potentate.
If the visitor requires other proofs he may take a landau at the station
in Monaco, and drive up over the heights of the capital into the piazza
before the prince's palace. When the prince is not at home he can
readily get leave to visit the palace for twenty minutes, but on my
unlucky day the prince was doubly at home, for he was sick as well as in
residence.
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