enlarge-imageOlive Pickers in the VarOlive Pickers in the Var
Olive Pickers in the Var
enlarge-imageEnvirons of NICEEnvirons of NICE
Environs of NICE
For long it played a preëminent rôle in the history of these parts. To-day one makes his way by one of the ever-pushing electric trams which, in France, are threading every suburban byway in the vicinities of the cities and large towns. In other days this was the ancient Roman way which bound Cimiez and Vence, the Via Augusta, the most ancient communication between Italy and Gaul. Evidences ofits old foundations are not deeply hidden, and this stretch of roadway must ever remain one of the most vivid examples of the utilitarian industry of the colonizing Romans in Gaul.
At Cimiez there are many evidences of the old Roman builders and their unequalled art, fragments of temples, aqueducts, baths, and amphitheatres. Everything is very fragmentary, often but a bit of a column, a sculptured leg or arm, or a morsel of a plate; but there is everything to prove that Cimiez was a most important place in its time. The most notable of these ruins is the amphitheatre, built after the conventional manner of theatre-building invented by the Greeks before the Romans, and which has, in truth, not been greatly changed up to to-day, except that it has been roofed over. The theatre at Cimiez in no way suggests those other Provençal examples at Orange or Arles, the peers of their class in western Europe, and the stone-cutting was of a very rude quality or has greatly crumbled in the ages. Such of the walls and arches as are visible to-day show a hardiness and correctness of design which, however, is not lived up to in the evidences of actual workmanship.
There are no grandiose structures anywherein the vicinity; everything is fragmentary, but Cimiez was evidently an important city in embryo, which some untoward influence prevented ever coming to its full-blown glory.
NICEin many respects is the centre from which radiates all the life of the Riviera; moreover its military and strategic importance attains the same distinction; it is the base of the whole system, social and political.
East and west the “Côte d’Azur” extends until it runs against the grime and commercial activity of Marseilles on the one side, and Genoa on the other.
From the heights back of Nice one sees the Ligurian coast stretch away to infinity, with the sea and the distant isles to the right, while to the left are the peaks of the Maritime Alps.
enlarge-imageCap FerratCap Ferrat
Cap Ferrat
On thispied de terreFrance has organized a great series of defences by land and sea. On every height is a fort or a battery, like the castle-crowned crags of the Rhine. The bays and harbours below the foot-hills are all defended from the menaces of a real or imaginary foe by a guardian fringe of batteries and defences of all ranks, and, what with battle-shipsand torpedo-boats, and destroyers and submarines, this frontier strip is in no more danger of sudden attack by an unfriendly power than are the interior provinces of Berry and Burgundy.
The entire country around Nice is one vast entrenched camp, constructed, equipped, and maintained, as may be supposed, with considerable difficulty and at enormous expense. A mountain fortress whose very stones, to say nothing of other materials, are transported up a trailless mountainside, is one of the wonder-works of man, and here there is a long line of such, encircling the whole region from the Italian frontier westward to Toulon.
Above all, the fortifications are concentrated in the country just back of the capital of the Riviera. All the great hillsides, rocky, moss-grown, or covered with pines or olive-trees, are a network of forts and batteries, strategic roads, reservoirs of water, and magazines of shot and shell.
One of the strongest of these forts is on the flanks of Mont Boron; Cap Ferrat holds another, and the “Route de la Corniche,” the only low-level line of communication between France and Italy, literally bristles with the same sort of thing.
Fort de la Drette, five hundred metres in altitude, rises above that astonishing Saracen village of Eze, while a strategic route leads to another at Feuillerins, six hundred and forty-eight metres high, and thence to Fort de la Revere at seven hundred and three metres, an impregnable series of fortifications, one would think.
Between the battery-crowned heights are the reservoirs and magazines of powder, all in full view of the automobile and coach tourists from Nice to Monte Carlo. The route skirts La Revere and the great towering rock back of Monte Carlo, known as the “Tête de Chien,” and the tourist may readily enough judge for himself as to the utility and efficacy of these distinctly modern defences.
The crowning glory, however, is on Mont Agel, the culminating peak in the vicinity of Nice. It is situated at a height of eleven hundred and forty-nine metres, and it would take a long siege indeed to capture this fortress, if things ever came to an issue in its neighbourhood.
Of all the wonderful examples of road-making in France, and they are more numerous and excellent than elsewhere, the “Route de la Grande Corniche” is the best known, coveringas it does a matter of nearly fifty kilometres from Nice to Vintimille.
Personally conducted tourists make the trip in brakes and char-à-bancs via Mont Gros and its observatory, the Col des Quatre Chemins, by Eze perched on its pyramidal rock, and La Turbie with its memories of Augustus, until they descend, either via Roquebrune to Menton, or by the steeps of La Turbie to Monte Carlo and its “distractions de haut goût.”
It is all very wonderful and, to the traveller who makes the trip for the first time or the hundredth, the beauties of the panorama which unfolds at every white kilometre stone is so totally different from that which he has just passed that he wonders if he is not journeying on some sort of a magic carpet which simply floats in space. Certainly there is no more beautiful view-point in all the world than that from the height overlooking Monaco, Monte Carlo, and Cap Martin, all bedded like jewels amid an inconceivable brilliancy and softness, a combination which seems paradoxical enough in print, but which in real life is quite the reverse, although it is ravishingly beautiful enough to be unreal.
The twenty-franc excursionists from Nice are rushed out from town in the early morning,via “La Grande Corniche,” to Menton, and back in the early afternoon via the “Route du Bord du Mer,” at something like the speed that themalle-posteof other days used to thread the great national roadways of France. Really the excursion is quite worth the money, and youdocover the ground, but you cover it much too rapidly, and so do the speeding automobilists. By far the best way to drink in all the beauties of this delightful promenade is to devote a week to it, and do it on foot. Walking tours are not fashionable any more, and in many thousands of miles of travel by road in France, the writer has never so much as walked between neighbouring villages, but some day that promenadeau piedis going to be made on the “Corniche” between Nice and Menton, returning, as do the “trippers,” via the lower road through Monte Carlo, La Condamine, and Beaulieu. It is the only way to appreciate the artistic beauties, and the strategic value, of this great highway of a civilization of another day, whose life, if not as refined as that of the present, could hardly have been more dissolute than that which to-day goes on to some extent here in this playground of the world.
One should make the journey out by the “Corniche” and back by the waterside, lunching at theaubergeat Eze off an anchovy or two, a handful of dried figs, and a flagon of thick, red, perfumed wine. Then he will indeed think life worth living, and regret that such things as railway trains, automobiles, and palace hotels ever existed.
Beyond Nice the Corniche route toward Italy is ample and majestic throughout its whole course, though, as a whole, it is no more beautiful than that Corniche by the Estérel. It winds around Mont Gros, at the back of Nice, and reaches its greatest height just beyond the Auberge de la Drette.En route, at least after passing the Col des Quatre Chemins, there is that ever-present panorama of the Mediterranean blue which all Frenchmen, and most dwellers on its shores, and some others besides, consider the most beautiful bit of water in the world.
To know the full charms of the road from Nice to Villefranche and Beaulieu one should start early in the morning, say in April or even May, when, to him who has only known the Riviera in the winter months, the very liquidness of the atmosphere and the landscape will be a revelation. All is impregnated with a penetrating gentle light, under which the housewalls, the roadway, the waves, the rocks, and the foliage take on a subtle tone which is quite indescribable and quite different from the artificiality which is more or less present all through the Riviera towns in winter. There is a difference, too, from the sun-baked dryness of the dead of summer. Each rock, each cliff, each bank of sand, and each wavelet of the Mediterranean has a note which forms the one tone needful for the gamut which is played upon one’s emotions.
Rounding Mont Boron by the coast road, one soon comes to Villefranche, whose very name indicates the privileges which were accorded to it by its founder, Charles II., Comte de Provence et Roi de Naples. Built in 1295, it became at once a free trading port, and speedily drew to itself a very considerable population. Soon, too, it came into prominence as a military port, and the Ducs de Savoie made it their chief arsenal.
To-day Villefranche occupies a very equivocal position. It has a population of something over five thousand souls, and its splendid harbour gives it a prominence in naval circles which is well deserved; but, in spite of this, the town has none of the attributes of the other Riviera coast towns and cities.
The prevailing note of Villefranche is Oriental, with its house walls kalsomined in red, blue, and pink, in ravishingly delicate and picturesque tones; really a great improvement, from every point of view, to the whitewash of Anglo-Saxon lands. The French name for this species of decoration is the worst thing about it, and, unless one has a considerable French vocabulary, the word “badigeonée” means nothing. Another exotic in the way of nomenclature which one meets at Villefranche ismoucharabieh, which is not found in many dictionaries of the French language. Amoucharabiehis nothing more or less than a unique variety of window screen or blind, behind which, taking into account the Eastern aspect of all things in Villefranche, one needs only to see the beautiful head of an Oriental maiden to imagine himself in far Arabia.
It is but a step beyond Villefranche to Beaulieu and “La Petite Afrique,” generally thought to be the most exclusive and retired of all the Riviera resorts. To a great extent this is so, though the scorching automobilists of thenouveau-richevariety have covered its giant olive-trees with a powdery whiteness which has considerably paled their already delicate gray tones.
Between Villefranche and Beaulieu is the peninsula of St. Jean, washed by the waves on either side and as indented and jagged as the shores of Greece. To-day it has become an annex of Nice, with opulent villas of kings, princes, and millionaires, from Leopold, King of Belgium down.
enlarge-imageVilla of Leopold, King of BelgiumVilla of Leopold, King of Belgium
Villa of Leopold, King of Belgium
At St. Jean-sur-Mer, midway down the peninsula, is a little fishing village, still quaint and unspoiled amid all the splendours of the palacesof kings and villas of millionaires, which have of late grown so plentiful in this once virgin forest tract. There are many souvenirs here of the time when the neighbourhood was occupied by the Knights Hospitalers of St. John of Jerusalem, and there is much history and legend connected with them. Seaward is the Promontory or Pointe de St. Hospice, where the Duc de Savoie, Emmanuel Philibert, built a fortification. It was an ideal spot for a defensive work of this nature, though it protected nothing except what was inside. It must, in a former day, have been a very satisfactory work of its kind, as it is recorded that this prince, coming to view the progress of the work, and fallen upon by the Saracens, retreated within the walls of his new defence, where he successfully repulsed all their attacks.
Many times did the pirates attack this outpost, but finally, as the country became peaceful, a hospice came to take the place of the warlike fortification, and from this establishment the Pointe de St. Hospice of to-day takes its name.
Half-way up the foot-hills of the Alps the great white ribbon of the “Corniche” rolls its solitary way until La Turbie is reached. Here is a little village seated proudly beneaththat colossal ruin, the Augustan trophy, which has been a marvel and subject of speculation for archæologists for ages past. One thing seems certain, however, and that is that it was a monument commemorative of the submission of forty-five distinct peoples of western Gaul to the power of Rome.
Westward is Roquebrune, where the “Corniche” drops to the two hundred-metre level, and one rapidly approaches the sea beyond Cap Martin, and thus reaches Menton, but two kilometres onward.
The coast route from Nice to Menton via Villefranche and Beaulieu approximates the same length as the “Corniche” proper, and its charms are as varied. It rolls along behind the old citadel of Mont Boron and suddenly opens up the magnificent bay of Villefranche, the favourite Mediterranean station of the Russians and Americans, and thence on rapidly to Beaulieu, Monte Carlo, and Menton.
All the way this route by the sea follows the shore and skirts picturesque gulfs andcalanques, and now and then tunnels a hillside only to come out into day and a vista more beautiful than that which was left behind.
THEancient Saracen fortress of Eze lies midway between Beaulieu and Monte Carlo, somewhat back from the coast, and crowns a pinnacle such as is usually devoted to the glory of St. Michel.
As one climbs the steep sides of the hill, the fantastic outlines of the roof-tops silhouette themselves against the sky quite like a scene from Dante’s masterpiece, or, if not that, like the fabled spectral Brocken. The road twists and turns, and the sea and shore blend themselves into one of those incomparable glories of the Riviera, until actually one stands on the little plateau which moors the tiny church and its surrounding dwellings.
The Eza of yesterday has become the Eze of to-day, but the former spelling was vastly more euphonic, and it is a pity that it was ever changed. Eze is ruinous to-day, as it has been for ages, and pagan and Christian monuments are cheek by jowl.
Rising abruptly three hundred metres from the sea-level, the mountain offered a stronghold well-nigh unassailable. First the Phœnicians occupied it, then the Phoceans, followed by the Romans, the Saracens, and all the warring factions and powers of mediæval times. No wonder it is reminiscent of all, with memorials ranging all the way from the temple dedicated to the Egyptian cult of Isis to the Christian church seen to-day.
enlarge-imageEzeEze
Eze
Centuries passed but slowly here, and the Moorish hordes, seeking for a vantage-ground on the Ligurian coast, took the peak for their own. The early founders did not need to goafield for the material for the building of houses and their military constructions. It was all close at hand. The rocky base sufficed for all.
What is left to-day of the old bourg, remodelled and rebuilt in many cases, but still the original structures to no small extent, is a veritable museum of architectural curiosities.
What an accented note it is in the whole vast expanse of green and blue! It is literally worth coming miles to see, even if one makes the wearisome journey on foot.
Eze is sequestered from all the world, and, like Normandy’s Mont St. Michel, would be an ideal place in which to shut oneself up if one wanted to escape from his enemies (and friends).
The shrine of Notre Dame de Laghet lies in the country back of Eze, but rather nearer to La Turbie. The whole south venerated Our Lady of Laghet in days gone by, and came to worship at her shrine. The neighbouring country is severe and less gracious than that of most of the flowering Riviera; but, in the early days of spring, with the hardier blossoms well forward, it is as delightful an environment for a shrine as one can well expect to find.
Historic souvenirs in connection with NotreDame de Laghet are many. The Duc de Savoie, Victor Amédée, came here to worship in 1689, and a century and a half later, his descendant, Charles Albert, shorn of his crown, and a fugitive, sought shelter here from the dangers which beset him. Here he knelt devoutly before the Madonna, and prayed that his enemies might be forgiven. A tablet to-day memorializes the event.
The little church of the establishment contains hundreds of votive offerings left by pious pilgrims, and, though architecturally the edifice is a poor, humble thing, it ranks high among the places of modern pilgrimage.
A kilometre beyond the gardens which face the Casino at Monte Carlo is a little winding road leading blindly up the hillside. “Où conduit-il?” you ask of a straggler; “A La Turbie, m’sieu;” and forthwith you mount, spurning the aid of thefuniculairefarther down the road. When one has progressed a hundred metres along this serpentine roadway, the whole ensemble of beauties with which one has become familiar at the coast are magnified and enhanced beyond belief. Nowhere is there a gayer, livelier colouring to be seen on the Riviera; this in spite of the conventionality of the glistening walls of the great hotels andthe artificial gardens with which the vicinity of the paradise of Monte Carlo abounds.
As one turns another hairpin corner, another plane of the horizon opens out until, after passing various isolated small houses, and zigzagging upward another couple of kilometres, he enters upon the “Route d’Italie,” and thence either turns to the left to La Turbie, or to the right to Roquebrune, a half-dozen kilometres farther on.
La Turbie is quite as much of an exotic as Eze. It is as vivid a reminder of a glory that is past as any monumental town still extant, and its noble Augustan Trophy, as a memorial of a historical past, is far greater than anything of its kind out of Rome itself. There is something almost sublime about this great sky-piercing tower, a monument to the vanquishing of the peoples of Gaul by the Roman legions.
Fragments of this great “trophy” have been carted away, and are to be found all over the neighbouring country. Barbarians and Saracens, one and all, pillaged the noble tower (“the magnificent witness to the powers of the divine Augustus,” as the French historians call it), using it as a quarry from which was drawn the building material for many of their later works. Without scruple it has been shornof its attributes until to-day it is only a bare, gaunt skeleton of its former proud self. Its marbles have been dispersed, some are in Nice, some in Monaco, and some in Genoa, but the greatest of all the indignities which the edifice underwent was that thrust upon it by Berwick, in 1706, when attempts were actually made to pull it to the ground.
enlarge-imageAugustan Trophy, La TurbieAugustan Trophy, La Turbie
Augustan Trophy, La Turbie
What its splendours must once have beenmay best be imagined from the following description:
“A massive quadrangular tower surrounded with columns of the Doric order and ornamented with statues of the lieutenants of Augustus, and personifications of the vanquished peoples. Surmounting all was a colossal statue of the emperor himself.”
La Turbie has a most interesting “porte,” once fortified, but now a mere gateway. It dates from the sixteenth century, and is an exceedingly satisfying example of what a mediæval gateway was in feudal times.
The church of the town is of great size and well kept, but otherwise is in no way remarkable.
As with the founders of Eze, the builders of La Turbie and its great Augustan Trophy had their material close at hand, and there was no need for the laborious carrying of material from a distance which accompanied the building of many mediæval monuments and fortifications.
A quarry was to be made anywhere that one chose to dig in the hillside, and, though no traces of the exact location whence the material was dug is to be seen to-day, there is no question but that it was a home product. Themarbles and statues alone were brought from afar.
Roquebrune, onward toward Menton, is more individual in the character of its people and their manners and customs than any of the other towns and villages near the great Riviera pleasure resorts. The ground is cultivated in small plots, and olive and fruit trees abound, and occasionally, sheltered on a little terrace, is a tiny vineyard struggling to make its way. The vine, curiously enough, does not prosper well here, at least not the extent that it formerly did, and accordingly it is a good deal of a struggle to get a satisfactory crop, no matter how favourable the season.
Here in the vicinity of Roquebrune one sees the little donkeys so well known throughout the mountainous parts of Italy and France. They are sure-footed little beasts, like their brother burros of the Sierras and the Rockies, and appear not to differ from them in the least, unless they are smaller. All through the region to the northward of the coast they file in cavalcades, bearing their burdens in panniers and saddle-bags in quite century-old fashion, and as if automobiles and railways had never been heard of. An automobile would have a hard time of it on some of the by-roads accessibleonly to these tiny beasts of burden, which often weigh but eighty kilos and cost little or nothing for provender.
These little Savoian donkeys are gentle and good-natured, but obstinate when it comes to pushing on at a gait which the driver may wish, but which has not yet dawned upon the donkey as being desirable. This, apparently, is the national trait of the whole donkey kingdom, so there is nothing remarkable about it. He will go,—when you twist his tail,—and if you twist it to the right he will turn to the left, and vice versa. A sailor would be quite at home with a donkey of Roquebrune.
Roquebrune is tranquil enough to-day, though there have been times when the rocky giant on whose bosom it sleeps awakened with a roar which shook the very foundations of its houses. These earthquakes have not been frequent; the last was in 1887; but the memory of it is enough to give fear to the timid whenever a summer thunder-storm breaks forth.
Roquebrune occupies a height very much inferior to that on which sits La Turbie; but the panorama from the town is in no way less marvellous, nor is it greatly different, hence it is not necessary to recount its beauties here.There is considerably more vegetation in the neighbourhood, and there are many lemon-trees, with rich ripening fruit, instead of the dwarfed unripe oranges which one finds at many other places along the Riviera.
The lemon-tree is the real thermometer of the region, and the inhabitant has no need of the appliances of Réaumur or Fahrenheit, or the more facile Centigrade, for when three degrees of frost strikes in through the skin of the lemon, it withers up and dies. The orange, curiously enough, resists this first attack of cold.
Roquebrune, like La Turbie, abounds in vaulted streets and terraced hillsides, allowing one to step from the roofs of one line of houses to the dooryards of another in most quaint and picturesque fashion. The people of Roquebrune are a prosperous and contented lot, and have the reputation of being “as laborious as the bee and as economical as the ant.”
enlarge-imageA Roquebrune DoorwayA Roquebrune Doorway
A Roquebrune Doorway
At the highest point, above most of the roof-tops of Roquebrune, are found the ruins of its château, in turn a one-time possession of the Lascaris and the Grimaldi, and belonging to the latter family when the town and Menton were ceded to France. From the platform of the ancient citadel one readily enough sees thepoint of the legend which describes Roquebrune as once having occupied the very summit of the height, and, in the course of ages, slipping down to its present position.
enlarge-imageMonte Carlo & MONACOMonte Carlo & MONACO
Monte Carlo & MONACO
“OLDMonaco and New Monte Carlo” might well be made the title of a book, for their stories have never been entirely told in respect to their relations to the world of past and present. Certainly the question of the morality or immorality of the present institution of Monte Carlo, called by the narrow-minded a “gambling-hell,” has never been thrashed out in all its aspects. Instead of being a blight, it may be just a safety-valve which works for the good of the world. It is something to have one spot where all the “swell mobsmen” of the world congregate, or, at least, pass, sooner or later, for, like “Shepheards” at Cairo and the “Café de la Paix” at Paris, Monte Carlo sooner or later is visited by all the world, the moralists to whine and deplore all its loveliness being wasted on the evil-doer, the preacher out of curiosity (as he invariably tells you, and probably this is so); the sentimental young girls and their mammas to be seen and to seeand (perhaps?) to play, and the pleasure-loving and the care-worn business man—for nine years and nine months out of ten—to play a little, and, when they have lost all they can afford, to withdraw without a regret. There is another class, several other classes in fact,but it is assumed that they need not be mentioned here.
Unquestionably there are many tragedies consummated at Monte Carlo, and all because of the tables, and it is also true that the same sort of tragedies take place in Paris, London, and New York, but it isn’t the gambling craze alone that has brought them about, and, anyway, one can come to Monte Carlo and have a very good time, and not become addicted to “the game.” To be sure not many do, but that is the fault of the individual and not the “Administration,” that all-powerful anonymous body which controls the whole conduct of affairs at Monte Carlo.
Some one has remarked the seemingly significant coat of arms of the present reigning Prince of Monaco, but assuredly he had very little knowledge of heraldry to assume that it had anything to do with the pleasure-making suburb of the capital of the Principality. It seems well enough to make mention of the fact here, if only to explode one of the fabulous tales which pass current among that class of tourists who come here, and, having hazarded a couple of coins at the tables, go home and mouth their adventures to awed acquaintances. Their tales of fearful adventure, and the anecdotethat the blazoning of the arms of the reigning prince represents the layout of the gaming-tables, are really too threadbare and thin to pass current any longer.
To many the Riviera means that “beautiful, subtle, sinister place, Monte Carlo,” and indeed itisthe most idyllically situated of the whole little paradise of coast towns from Marseilles to Genoa, and perhaps in all the world.
Whatever the moral aspect of Monte Carlo is or is not, there is no doubt but that it is one of the best paying enterprises in the amusement world, else how could M. Blanc have lived in a palace which kings might envy, and have kept the most famous string of race-horses in France. Certainly not out of a “losing game.” He himself made a classic bon mot when he said, “Rouge gagne quelquefois, noir souvent, mais Blanc toujours.”
M. Blanc was a singularly astute individual. He knew his game and he played it well, or rather his tables and his croupiers did it for him, and he even welcomed men with systems which they fondly believed would sooner or later break the bank, for he knew that the best of “systems” would but add to the profits of the bank in the long run. He even answered an inquisitive person, who wanted to know howone should gamble in order to win: “The most sensible advice I can give you is—‘Don’t.’”
One reads in a local guide-book that the chances between the player and the bank, taking all the varieties of games into consideration, is as 60 to 61, and that the winnings of the bank were something like £1,000,000 sterling per year. This would seem to mean that the players of Europe and America took £61,000,000 to Monte Carlo each year, and brought away £60,000,000, leaving £1,000,000 behind as the price of their pleasure. The magnitude of these figures is staggering, and so able a statistician as Sir Hiram Maxim refuted them utterly a couple of years ago as follows:
“If the bank actually won one million sterling a year, and its chances were only 1 in 60 better than the players, it would seem quite evident that sixty-one millions must have been staked. However, upon visiting Monte Carlo and carefully studying the play, I found that instead of the players taking £61,000,000 to Monte Carlo, and losing £1,000,000 of it, the total amount probably did not exceed £1,000,000, of which the bank, instead of winning, as shown in the guide-book, about 1½ per cent., actually won rather more than 90 per cent.; therefore, the advantages in favour of the bank,instead of being 61 to 60, were approximately 10 to 1.”
This ought to correct any preconceived false notions of percentages and sum totals.
The law of averages is a very simple thing in which most people, in respect to gambling, and many other matters, have a supreme faith; but Sir Hiram disposes of this in a very few words. He says: “Let us see what the actual facts are.
“If red has come uptwenty timesin succession, it is just as likely to come up at the twenty-first time as it would be if it had not come up before for a week. Each particular ‘coup’ is governed altogether by the physical conditions existing at that particular instant. The ball spins round a great many times in a groove. When its momentum is used up, it comes in contact with several pieces of brass, and finally tumbles into a pocket in the wheel which is rotating in an opposite direction. It is a pure and unadulterated question of chance, and it is not influenced in the least by anything which has ever taken place before, or that will take place in the future.”
Thus vanish all “systems” and note-books, and all the schemes and devices by which the deluded punter hopes to beat M. Blanc at hisown game. It is possible to play at “Rouge et Noir” at Monte Carlo and win,—if you don’t play too long, and luck is not against you; but if you stick at it long enough, you are sure to lose. There was once a man who went to Monte Carlo and played the very simple “Rouge et Noir” in a sane and moderate fashion, and in three years was the winner by twenty-five thousand francs. He returned the fourth year, and in three weeks lost it all, and another ten thousand besides. He gave up the amusement from that time forward as being too expensive for the pleasure that one got out of it.
As a business proposition, the modestly titled “Société Anonyme des Bains de Mer et Cercle des Étrangers” (for it is well to recall that the inhabitants of Monte Carlo are forbidden entrance,theirmorals, at least, being taken into consideration) is of the very first rank. It earned for its shareholders in 1904-05 the magnificent sum of thirty-six million francs, an increase within the year of some two millions. It is steadily becoming more prosperous, and the businesslike prince who rents out the concession has had his salary raised from 1,250,000 francs to 1,750,000 francs per annum, on an agreement to run for fifty years longer.
By those who know it is a well-recognizedfact that the bank at Monte Carlo loses more by fraud than by any defects in its system of play. From the pages of that unique example of modern journalism, “Rouge et Noir—L’Organe de Défense des Joueurs de Roulette et de Trente-et-Quarante,” are culled the two following incidents:
A certain gambler, Ardisson by name, bribed a croupier to insert a specially shuffled pack into the “Trente-et-Quarante” game one fine evening, during an interval when attention was diverted by a female accomplice having dropped a roll of louis on the floor. After eight abnormal “coups,” the bank succumbed,—“la société se retire majestueusement” the informative sheet puts it,—180,000 francs out of pocket. The swindler—for all gamblers are not swindlers—and his accomplice, or accomplices, made their way safely across the frontier, and the only echo of the event was heard when the guilty croupier was sentenced to two months’ imprisonment,—a period of confinement for which he was doubtless well paid.
Another incident recounted in this most interesting newspaper was that of one Jaggers, an Englishman from Yorkshire, where all men are singularly knowing. This individual discovered that one of the roulette-wheels had adistinct tendency toward a certain number. His persistency in backing that number attracted the attention of the bank’s detectives, who marvelled at his continued run of luck. Eventually the authorities solved the problem, and now the roulette-wheels are interchangeable, and are moved daily from one set of bearings to another.
Once it was planned to explode a bomb near the gas-metre in the basement, and in the excitement, after the lights went out, to rob the tables and players alike. This plan was conceived by a gang of ordinary thieves, who needed no great intelligence to concoct such a scheme, which, needless to say, was nipped in the bud.
Some years ago the game was played with counters which were bought at a little side-table. A gang of counterfeiters made these in duplicate, and had a considerable haul before the trick was discovered. The museum of the Casino has many of these unstable records, but a change was immediately made in favour of five-franc pieces, louis, and notes of the Banque de France, which are no more likely to be counterfeited for playing the tables at Monte Carlo than they are for general purposes of trade.
Formerly one could wager a great “pillbox” roll of five-franc pieces done up in paper,—twenty of them to the hundred,—but to-day the envelope must be broken open. Some one won a lot of money once with some similar rolls of iron, which, until the daily or weekly inventory on the part of the bank, were not discovered to be foreign to the coin of the realm.
There are two sides to the life and environment of Monaco and Monte Carlo; there is the beautiful and gay side, for the lover of charming vistas and a lovely climate; and there is the practical, dark, and sordid side, of which “the game” is the all.
Much has been written of the moral or immoral aspect of the place, and the discussion shall have no place here. The reader will find it all set out again in his daily, weekly, or monthly journal sometime during the present year, as it has appeared perennially for many years.
Monaco is old and Monte Carlo is new. The history of Monaco runs back for many centuries. The Phœnicians built a temple to Hercules here long before its political history began; then for a time it was a rendezvous for pirates, and finally it fell to the Genoese Republic. Jean II. became the seigneur, and left it to hispropre frère, Lucien Grimaldi, theancestor of the present house of Grimaldi, to whom the princes of to-day belong. Thus it is that the Prince of Monaco, though the sovereign of the smallest political state of Europe, belongs to the oldest reigning house. Monaco is a relic of the ages past, but Monte Carlo is a thing of yesterday.
Monte Carlo is the result of the labours of M. Blanc, who, though not the creator of the vast enterprise as it exists to-day, was the real developer of the scheme. He attained great wealth and distinction, as is borne out by the fact that he lived luxuriously and was able to marry his daughters to princes of the great house of Napoleon.
Blanc showed his business acumen when he got a concession from the Prince of Monaco to run a gambling-machine at Monte Carlo. He got the concession first, and then bought out a weak, puny establishment which was already in operation, after having made the proprietors a proposition which he gave them two hours to accept or reject. The contract closed, he arranged immediately to begin the new Casino with Garnier, the designer of the Paris Opera, as his architect. Opposite it he built the Hôtel de Paris, which has the deserved reputation of being the most expensive hotel in existence.Like everything else at Monte Carlo, you get your money’s worth, but things are not cheap. The Prince of Monaco generously gave his name to the place, and the enterprise—for at this time it was nothing more than a great collective enterprise—was christened Monte Carlo.
Everything comes to him who waits, and soon the Paris, Lyons, and Mediterranean Railway extended its line to the gay little city of pleasure, in spite of the pressure brought to bear by other Riviera cities and towns to the westward. Thus the place started, almost at once, as a full-grown and lusty grabber of the people’s money, always wanting more; and the world came on luxurious trains, whereas formerly they made their way by a cranky little steamboat from Nice, or by the coach-and-four of other days.
Like most successful handlers of other people’s money, Blanc was a reader of man’s emotions. He knew his customers, and he knew that many of them were the scum of the earth, and he guarded carefully against allowing them too much freedom. He may have feared his life, or he may have feared capture for ransom, like missionaries and political suspects, and for this reason M. Blanc went about with nevera penny on his person. He carried a blank cheque, however, printed, it is said, in red ink—for the old-stager at Monte Carlo still likes to regale thenouveauwith the tale—and good for several hundred thousand francs. The “man in the box” had very explicit instructions never to pay this cheque, should it turn up, unless he had previously received a telegram ordering him to do so. It will not take the sagacity of a Dupin or a Sherlock Holmes to evolve the reason for this, but it was a clever idea nevertheless.
In case any of the curious really want to know how the game is played, the following facts are given:
Blanc’s organization was well-nigh a perfect one, and, though its founder is now dead, it remains the same. The staff is a large one. At the head is an administrator-general, who has three collaborators, also known as administrators, one who conducts the affairs of the outside world, has charge of the supplies for the establishment, and the arrangements for the pigeon-shooting, the automobile boat-races, the care of the gardens, etc.; another holds the purse-strings and is a sort of head cashier; and the third has charge of the tables and their personnel.
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Under this last is a director of the games, three assistant directors, fourchefs-de-table,—which sounds as though they might be cooks, but who in reality are something far different; then come five inspectors, and fourteen chiefs of the roulette-tables, and all of them are a pretty high-salaried class of employee, as such things go in Europe.
The chiefs of the roulette-tables draw seven and five hundred francs a month, for very short hours and easy work.
There are two classes of dealers,—croupiers at the roulette-tables andtailleursat “trente-et-quarante,” each of whom receive from four to six hundred francs a month, according to their experience.
The apprentices, who some day expect to become croupiers,—those who do the raking in,—receive two hundred francs a month. All, however, are under an espionage in all their sleeping, waking, and working moments as keen and observant as if they were bank messengers in Wall Street.
Each roulette-table has achefand asous-chefand seven croupiers, who are expected, it is said, to keep their hands spread open before them on the table between all the turns of the wheel. A story is told, which may ormay not be true, of a croupier who was inordinately fond of taking snuff. It seemed curious that a coin should always adhere to the bottom of his snuff-box whenever he laid it down upon the table, and accordingly that particular croupier was banished and the practice forbidden.
Another had built himself a nickle-in-the-slot arrangement which, with remarkable celerity, conducted twenty-franc pieces from somewhere on the rim of his exceedingly tall and stiff collar to an unseen money-belt. Every time he scratched his ear, or slapped at an imaginary mosquito, it cost the bank a gold piece. Now high collars are banished and mosquito-netting is at every door and window.
No employee is allowed to play, nor are the Monégasques themselves. All nations are represented in the establishment, French, Italian, Russians, Belgians, and Swiss. Once there was a croupier who spoke English so perfectly that he might be taken for an Englishman or an American, but he proved to be a native of the little land of dikes and windmills, where they teach English in the schools to the youth of a tender age.
The French language reigns and French money is used exclusively. You may cash sovereignsand eagles at the bureau, and you may do your banking business at the counters of the “Crédit-Lyonnais,” which discreetly hangs out its shingle just over the border on French territory, though not a stone’s flight from the Casino portals. You know this because beneath their sign you read another in bold, flaring letters, as if it were the most important of all, “On French Soil.”
The three towns of the Principality of Monaco each present a totally different aspect; but, in spite of all its loveliness, one’s love for Monte Carlo is a sensuous sort of a thing, and it is with a real relief that he turns to admire Monaco itself.
Its story has often been told, but there always seems something new to learn of it. The writer always knew that its flora was to be remarked, even among those horticultural exotics scattered so bountifully all over the Riviera, and that, apparently, the Monégasques had the art instinct highly developed, as evinced by the many beautiful monuments and buildings of the capital; but it was only recently that he realized the excellence of the typographical art of the printers of Monaco. These craftsmen have reached a high degree of proficiency and taste, as evinced by that mostexcellent production, the “Collection de Documents Historiques,” published by the archivist of the Principality, and the “Résultats des Campagnes Scientifiques Accomplies sur son Yacht, par S. A. le Prince Albert de Monaco.”
Authors the world over might well wish their works produced with so much excellence of typography and so rich a format and impression.
Monaco, small and restricted as it is, is full of surprises and anomalies. It has a ruling monarch, a palace, an army,—of sixty odd, all told,—a bishop and a cathedral all its very own, though the Principality is but three and a half kilometres in length and slightly more than a kilometre in width, its only rival for minuteness being the former province of Heligoland.
The reigning prince has a military staff composed of two aides-de-camp, an ordnance officer, and a chief of staff. He has also a grand and honorary almoner, a chaplain and a chamberlain, several state secretaries, a librarian, and an archivist,—besides another staff devoted to his oceanographical hobby. There are, of course, many other functionaries, like those one reads of in swashbuckler novels, and the list closes with an “Architect-Conservator of the Palaces of His Serene Highness.”
After the prince comes the Principality, and it, too, has a long list of guardians and office-holders. There is a governor-general, who is usually a titled person, a treasurer, and, of course, an auditor, and there is a registrar of the tobacco traffic and a registrar of the match trade, two monopolies by which all well-regulated Latin governments set much store.
Finally there is the municipal governmental organization, with the regulation coterie of little-worked office-holders. They may have their bosses and their games of “graft” here, or they may not, but they are sure to have a never-ending supply of red tape if you want to cut a gateway through your garden wall or sweep your chimney down.
There is also an official newspaper known asLe Journal de Monaco.
The church is better represented here than in most communities of its size. A monseigneur is chaplain to the prince, and Monaco, through the consideration of Leo XIII., in 1887, is the proud possessor of its own cathedral church and its dignitary.
To arrive on the terraces of Monte Carlo at twilight, on a spring-time or autumn evening, is one of the great episodes in one’s life. You are surrounded by an atmosphere whichis balsamic and perfumed as one imagines the Garden of Eden might have been. All the artificiality of the place is lost in the softening shadows, and all is as like unto fairy-land as one will be likely to find on this earth. The lovely gardens, the gracious architecture, the myriads of lights just twinkling into existence, the hum of life, the moaning and plashing of the waves on the rocky shores beneath, and, above, a canopy of palms lifting their heads to the sky, all unite to produce this unparalleled charm.
When one considers that fifty years ago the Monte Carlo rock was as bald and bare as Mont Blanc or Pike’s Peak, it speaks wonders for art, or artificiality, or whatever one chooses to call it, that it could have been made to blossom thus.
On a fine morning the effect, too, is equally entrancing,—“Onze heure, c’est l’heure exquise.” The miracle of brilliancy of sea and sky is nowhere excelled in the known world, and, if the raucous sounds of the railway and the electric tram do break the harmony somewhat, there is still left the admirable works of the hand of nature and man, who have here planned together to give an ensemble which,in its appealing loveliness, far outweighs the discord of mundane things.
One is astonished at it all, and, whether he approves or disapproves of the morality of Monte Carlo, he is bound to endorse the opinion that its loveliness and luxury is superlative.
The Principality of Monaco, like those other petty states, Andorra and San Marino, comes very near to being a burlesque of the greater powers that surround it. It is not France; it is not Italy; it is a power all by itself; the most diminutive among the monarchies of the world, but, all things considered, one of the wealthiest and best kept of all the states of Europe. Monaco, the town, has a population of over eight thousand per square kilometre, while its nearest rival among the states of Europe, for density of population, is Belgium, of a population of but two hundred to the same area.
From the heights above Monte Carlo one sees a map of it all spread out before him in relief, the three towns, Monte Carlo, Condamine, and Monaco, with their total of fifteen thousand souls and the most marvellous setting which was ever given man’s habitation outside of Eden.