If You Liked, He Would Speak
French Or Italian, Though He Spoke English As Well As Any One, And He
Was Of That Excellent Piedmontese Race Which Has Been The Saving Salt Of
The Whole Peninsula.
As for the food, it was far beyond that of our
cold-storage, and it must have been cheap, since it was provided for us
at the rate we paid.
The cost of dress varies, according to the taste of and the purse,
everywhere. White serge seemed the favorite wear of most of the ladies
one saw in the street at Monte Carlo, especially in the region of the
Casino. This may have expressed an inner condition, or it may have been
a sympathetic response to the advances of the flowers in the pretty beds
and parterres so fancifully designed by the gardeners of the
administration, or it may have been a token of the helpless submission
to which the windows of the milliners and modistes reduced all comers of
the dressful sex. Many of the men with the women, or without them, were
also in white serge, but they seemed more variably attired; there was a
prevailing suggestion of yachting or automobiling in their dress,
though doubtless most of them had not sailed or motored to the spot.
Some few, say four or five, may have motored away from it, for in the
centre of the charming square before the Casino there was an automobile
of some newest type being raffled for in the interest of that chiefest
of the Christian virtues which makes its most successful appeals in the
vicinity of games of chance. Some one must have won the machine and
carried a party of his friends away, and triumphantly turned turtle with
it over the first of the precipices which abound at Monte Carlo. More
than the tables within this opportunity of fortune tempted me, and it
was only by the repeated recurrence to my principles that I was able to
get away alive. In spite of myself, I did not get away without, however
guiltlessly, having yielded to the spirit of the place. It was at the
Administrational Art Exhibition, where there were really some good
pictures, and where, on my entering, I was given a small brass disk. On
going out I attempted to restore this to the door-keeper, but he went
back with me to a certain piece of mechanism, where he instructed me to
put the disk into a slot. Then the disk ran its course, and a small
brass ball came out at the bottom. The door-keeper opened this, and
showed me that it was empty; but he gave me to understand that it might
have been full of diamonds, or rubies, or seed-pearls, which might have
implanted in me a lust of gambling I should never have overcome. Monte
Carlo was in every way tempting. A vast oblong, brilliant with flowers
in artistic patterns, stretched upward from the Casino, and there was an
agreeable park where one might sit. On every other side there were
costly hotels and costly restaurants, including that of the unexampled,
the insurpassable Giro, where one saw people eating and drinking at the
windows whenever one passed, by day or night. Beyond the Casino seaward
were the beautiful terraces, planted with palms and other tropic
growths, where people might come out and kill themselves when they had
nothing left to lose but their lives; and against the dark green of
their fronds the temple of fortune lifted a frosted-cake-like front of
long extent. I do not know just what type of architecture it is of, but
it distinctly suggests the art of the pastry cook when he has triumphed
in some edifice crowning the centre of the table at a great public
dinner. What mars the pleasing effect most is a detail which enforces
this suggestion, for the region of the Casino is thickly frequented by a
species of black doves, and when these gather in close lines of black
dots along the eaves, they have exactly the effect of flies clustering
on the sugary surfaces of the cake. At intervals are bronze statues of
what seem a sort of adolescent cherubs, but which have, I do not know
why, a peculiarly devilish appearance. No doubt they are harmless
enough; but certainly they do nothing to keep the flies off the cake.
In fine, as an edifice the Casino disappoints, and if one is not
pressingly curious about the interior, one rather lingers on the terrace
overlooking the sea, and the lines of the railroad following the shore,
and the panorama of the several towns. It is charming to sit there, and
if it is in the afternoon, you may see an artist there painting
water-colors of the scenery. Even if he were not painting, you could not
help knowing him for an artist, because he wears a black velvet jacket
and knickerbockers, and a soft slouch hat, and has a curled black
mustache and pointed beard; there is no mistaking him; and at a given
moment, after he has been working long enough, he puts above his sketch
the sign, "For Sale," as artists always do, and then, if you want a
masterpiece, you go down a few steps from where you are sitting and buy
it. But I never did that any more than I took tickets for the charity
automobile, though there is no telling what I might not have done if I
had broken the bank when at last I went into the Casino.
It seems to open about eleven o'clock in the morning, for gamblers are
hard-working, impatient people, and do not want to lose time. A broad
stretch of red carpet is laid down the steps from the portal and they
begin to go in at once, and people keep going in until I know not what
hour at night. But I think mid-afternoon is the best hour to see them,
and it is then that I will invite the reader to accompany me,
instructing him to turn to the left on entering, and get his gratis
billet of admission to the rooms from the polite officials there in
charge, who will ask for his card, and inquire his country and city, but
will not insist upon his street and his number in it.
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