At 11 P.M. while the service was in progress, the glare of a bonfire, on the point of the rock, shot suddenly over the sea. It was a good bonfire for the light of its flames could be seen from Cap d’Ail to Cap Martin. It was a signal to the French that “The Day” had come and not only the day but the hour. The French captain, the Comte d’Alais, with a fine body of men under his command was looking out eagerly for this flash of fire and the moment he saw it he set off with his company to Monaco.

At the same time the Monégasques and the five-score absent-minded visitors from Mentone fell upon the Spaniards, threw open the gate and admitted the two hundred who had been shivering outside in the cold. After a sharp fight the scanty garrison was overcome and were lodged in a dungeon where they could continue their prayers for the ruin of the French at greater leisure.

Next morning the French troops marched into Monaco with banners flying and bands playing. They were welcomed by the people with songs and cheers and noisy enthusiasm. The houses were hung with garlands of flowers and all the women were decked out in their best. The cheering must have penetrated to the dungeons and have been very bitter to the Spaniards who had spent so much time in praying for the overthrow of these very men whose swinging tramp they could hear overhead.

The prince behaved with much graciousness and generosity. He caused the French troops and the Spaniards to be paraded in the square and, when the crowd had been hushed to silence, he delivered an appropriate and, no doubt, impressive address. At its conclusion he took from his neck the order of the Golden Fleece and handed it to the Spanish captain with the request that he would return it to His Majesty of Spain with the late wearer’s compliments and thanks. He then, amid uproarious cheering, donned the white scarf which betokened his allegiance to the King of France. The Spaniards he treated with a fine liberality, inspired by the grateful knowledge that he would never see them again. He allowed the officers to retain their swords. He gave to all the soldiers double pay and a generous supply of food for their journey. Furthermore he presented to the captain a letter in which—with some excess of fancy—he dwelt upon the bravery which both officers and men had shown under the recent disturbing conditions.

Thus it was that the Spaniards left Monaco and that the people of the rock saw the last of them. As they marched down the cliff to the high road they were not only content but even disposed to be thankful. Some, no doubt, were a little sad because they were leaving their sweethearts behind in Monaco; while all—without question—were burning to wring the neck of the priest who had organised that special night service at which they had prayed for the undoing of their now jubilant enemies.

Now was the opportunity for the mediator, for the common-sense man with no nonsense about him, for the person with a fertile brain. Some genius among the disputing parties suggested a compromise and a plank. The scheme was as follows. A broad plank was to be brought and sloped between the vessel and the quay. The prince was to take a certain number of steps along the plank towards the ship and, at the same moment, the bride would take precisely the same number of steps towards the shore. By this means the two would meet, face to face, exactly in the centre of the plank; the bridegroom would then turn on his heels and he and the lady would proceed to the shore side by side.

This ingenious manœuvre was agreed upon. Its execution was watched with gasping interest, for the happiness of two fond hearts depended upon its correct execution. If the prince took one more step than the lady he would be humiliated for ever; whereas if the bride ventured an extra pace she could never hide her blushes while she lived. The crowd was thrilled; the courtiers trembling and the two chief performers as nervous as if they had to walk on a tight-rope.

It ended well. The man and the maid met in the exact centre of the plank and, keeping step, marched to the shore with the precision of two German soldiers on parade. So admirable was the performance that the heavy military boot of the prince and the little satin shoe of the lady touched the soil of Monaco at the same moment.

The crowd shrieked till they were hoarse; the courtiers bowed to the earth; the guard became so stiff that they nearly fell backwards, while the band let loose that National Hymn which had been pent up so long.

And so—as the story books say—they married and lived happily ever after.

It only remains to add one other particular. In the fullness of time the prince died and the princess married again. She married Louis Joseph, Prince of Condé. He had been devoted to her for thirty years and, in spite of her age, still regarded her as the most beautiful creature in the world.

They were married in London and under circumstances which rendered the use of a plank unnecessary.

MONTE CARLO, they told me, was a place of great wickedness, where every path—though lined with flowers—led headlong to the Pit. From the many romances which deal with Monte Carlo I gathered that it was the seat of an intensive culture in iniquity, that it specialised in subtle forms of evil doing and that in its pleasances vice blossomed as the rose. Among what writers always term “the motley crowd” in this fictitious borough were men of quite exceptional depravity, women more accomplished than Delilah and crafty foreigners of the yellow-skinned and black-haired variety who are far too foreign to be real. Suicide, I understood, prevailed as an endemic disease.

I arrived at the principality on Christmas Eve and, owing to some train derangement, at an hour a little short of midnight. I approached this place—which those who are careless of terms describe as “a Hell”—with anxious interest. When the train came to a standstill I found myself in a quiet, ill-lit station, precisely like fifty other stations on the line. I resented this. I resented even the fact that the magic name “Monte Carlo” was portrayed in quite homely and decorous letters. I expected to see a number of peculiarly evil men alight from the train; but they were not in evidence. They probably “slipped away in the gloom,” as they do in the books. The only passengers I noticed were a very weary old lady and her maid. The lady was respectable almost to extinction and was absorbed by concern for her many hand bags and her obtuse dog.

I had been led to think that at midnight the grosser revels of Monte Carlo would be at their height; so in the drive to the hotel I expected to be shocked and grieved. I found myself, on the contrary, passing through pleasant streets as silent as those that encircle a cathedral close. The streets, moreover, were practically empty and for the morality and integrity of the few who passed by I was prepared to vouch even in the dark.

I thought I might see through some open window a room glaring with light and reeking with the ill odours, the ribald sounds and the drunken antics of a supper table. Possibly, through another window, I should behold wild-haired men and shamelessly dressed women bending over a green cloth speckled with cards. I saw only sleeping villas and drowsy gardens that breathed nothing but content and peace. With the romances working in my mind it would have been hardly a matter of surprise had I come upon a man in dress clothes, lying on his back in the pathway, with a wet crimson patch spreading over the front of his white shirt. Happily I saw no such thing. Monte Carlo, so far, had failed; failed in that it was not the place I had been led to expect by the writers of fiction.

Next morning, before the sun rose, I stepped out of my bedroom window on to the balcony to take a first look at the amazing city. It was now Christmas Day and still very dark. From the height at which I stood I appeared to be looking into a limitless vault with above a dome of the deepest blue, dotted with stars, and below a floor flooded by a sea whose surface was as ruffled metal.

The only light came from a gap in the east, at the uttermost limit of the vast water. It was a rare and tender light that seemed to be reflected up from the depths. A level band of orange stretched along the sea and over it was a wash of cowslip yellow that, fading into the half-suggested green of an opening leaf, was lost higher still in a flood of blue. Against this ineffable glow stood up, in a black, hard silhouette, the tops of houses.

It was evident that on the slope below me was a town and, at the foot of the town, a harbour. The town was a mere dark mass, so confused that it might have been a jumble of black rocks, save that, here and there, were tiny lights—lights evidently in upper windows. From one hidden casement near by, that must have been open and uncurtained, a gleam fell upon the side of a villa revealing every detail of shutter and balcony as well as a strip of bright ornament painted on the wall. The harbour was made manifest by two black piers with a light at the end of each—one green, one red—by a sheen, like that of quicksilver, on the water in the basin and by a row of lamps upon the three sides of the quay.

Beyond the harbour was a towering dull mass that I knew to be Monaco. It was picked out by a few dots of light which came, no doubt, from scattered rooms and by vague towers scarcely visible before the sullen curtain of the sky.

To the east there stood out, very cleanly cut against the delicate light of the coming day, certain black pinnacles and domes. They looked like the peaks of some fantastic oriental temple but I recognised them as belonging to the Casino and the great hotel.

Clear in the heaven, above these pinnacles and domes, blazed one large, brilliant star. It was, I imagine, the very Star in the East that two thousand years ago shone over the stable at Bethlehem.

As the southern winter begins again the freshly-sown grass springs up; the lawns become green; the buds open; the roses, the heliotrope, the geraniums and the mimosa break into flower and the world is as gay as the sun and a caressing wind can make it.

It is then a tempting time to think of the drab, mist-shrouded island of England with its sodden fields and the rain dripping from the thatch, of London, of those sad houses and those awful streets, of the slush-covered roads, of the muffled faces and the blue hands, of the hours of semi-darkness, of the sun that is seen as a red disc in a fog.

Because Monte Carlo, as a town, appears to be symbolic of all that is young it must not be assumed that its inhabitants have acquired eternal youth. Many attempt it, many struggle to attain it with an eagerness which is pathetic and pitiable. They are like gaily-dressed ghosts, a little stiff in movement, following a figure that dances before them like a faun. There is a butterfly called “The Painted Lady” and perhaps it will suffice to say that the existence of this fluttering thing will come often to the minds of those who stroll along the Terrace in the sun.

Apart from its suggestion of youthfulness Monte Carlo is a town full of remarkable contrasts as extreme as the black shadow of a cypress on a marble wall. On one side of the haven, with its chapel to Ste. Dévote, rises the great rock of Monaco. On its summit stand the palace, the fortress and the little town—all three so staid, so grey, so very, very old—just as they have stood in company through some six hundred years. On the other side of the chapel, on rising ground, lies Monte Carlo, modern in every fibre of its being, a town that has sprung up in a night like a gaudily-tinted fungus, a brilliant, vivid place, slashed with colour like a jester’s coat, as ephemeral as a rainbow, since any change in the public taste may cause it to fade into nothingness.

On the crest of the hill above Monte Carlo there stands, against the skyline, the massive monument in stone set up by the Emperor Augustus to mark the victory of Rome over a horde of savages; while below, by the edge of the sea, are the pinnacles of the Casino, a monument in papier mâché to mark the subjection of a cultured folk to the mastery of a passion.

Climbing the mountain behind the town is still the ancient road that, more than two thousand years ago, led from the Roman forum into Gaul; while, by the water’s edge, on the other hand, are the railway, the motor track and a hydroplane that has just flown over from Corsica.

All around Monte Carlo, from the east to the west, are the cave-dwellings of prehistoric men, a brutish people clad in wolf skins; while in the town itself are hotels of unparalleled luxury and, on the Terrace, a company of pampered men and women decked in all the “purple and fine linen” that the world can provide.

Still more curious is it that the great modern forts of Mont Agel and the Tête de Chien actually look down upon a line of fortified camps and stone strongholds built by the Ligurians before the dawn of history.

THE General Atmosphere.—The atmosphere of Monte Carlo is the subject of some comment. It is in fact complained of. The air over the town is not said to be unpleasant in colour; it is not, for example, stated to be green or yellow. The charge is that the atmosphere is “vitiated.” Now in the dictionary “to vitiate” is said to mean “to corrupt, debase or contaminate” and therefore the accusation is a grave one.

In defence it can be claimed that the moral atmosphere in Monte Carlo is not so vitiated as it is in London or in Paris. There are visitors to the principality—both men and women—who are indulgently described as “undesirable”; but they are not peculiar to Monte Carlo, nor do they form even a conspicuous item in its holiday population.

Moreover the innocent visitor to the town is not of necessity thrust into the society of these people. If they are not desired they can be avoided as easily as they can be at Trouville or at Brighton. Monte Carlo may not be sanctimonious, but it does not flaunt its vices as some towns do their virtues.

Moreover so well is Monte Carlo controlled that the young lady, when necessity demands, can walk from the Opera House to her hotel without fear of being incommoded, a venture that she would not essay in either London or Paris; while she will see less to offend her on the Casino Terrace than in the Bois de Boulogne. As for the young man he is more free from molestation in the boulevards of Monte Carlo than he would be in Regent Street.

Those who wish to live the plain, unemotional life of a French country town will find that Monte Carlo fulfils their needs. They will meet with neither shocks nor distractions unless they seek them; for the circle within which the florid society of the town revolves is—like the roulette wheel—extremely small; whereas the quiet streets of Monaco, the olive groves, the hill paths, the lonely walks form a world that opens far.

The Gambling.—The strictures bestowed upon the gaming rooms are apt to be a little violent and sweeping. I assume that no one can say a word in favour of gambling, nor even excuse it. It is no doubt a feeble apology to claim that there are degrees of gambling, that every race-course and every Bourse exhibits a more pernicious and more damaging form of “play” than can be laid to the charge of the Casino. The gambler at Monte Carlo injures no one directly but himself. He knows at least that the Administration is above suspicion and that the same virtue cannot be claimed for the whole body of bookmakers. Gambling on the public markets may implicate innocent people to their undoing and when it deals with the necessaries of life and leads to the making of “corners” in this commodity or in that it may involve a whole community in loss and distress. There is indeed a wide difference between gambling with plaques on a green cloth and gambling with corn.

Play at the Casino is for the reckless rich and the foolish and these happen to be two varieties of mankind peculiarly difficult to control. When once it is understood that, in the long run, the Tables must win and do win then let the poor man be advised. The fool will not accept advice, the rich man does not need it and so the game goes on.

It is, no doubt, an equally feeble defence to point out that the Casino does great good with its gains. It keeps the little principality in perfect order and makes it a reliable health resort. It is no vain boast to say that Monte Carlo is the cleanest and trimmest town in France, that it is dustless and that its sanitation is good. The Casino provides the police and the public officers, maintains the roads and a garden which is the delight of many, while it affords to its people a degree of comfort and security which is not to be belittled at the present day. Moreover through funds derived from the Administration churches and museums are built, schools and hospitals are maintained and real poverty is abolished. These facts do not make gambling a virtue, but they serve to temper a slashing and wholly destructive criticism.

A large proportion of people gamble for what they call “the fun of the thing.” The term is difficult to define, but if they find amusement and can afford that amusement there is little to be said.

It is unnecessary to describe the salles de jeu. They have been pictured—with exact or inexact details—a hundred times and have figured more often in works of fiction than have any other actual apartments in the world. The miscellaneous people who cluster round the tables are said to provide an interesting study in faces. The study is limited. All are supposed to be “playing”—playing, it may be assumed, as children play at a game—but their countenances are so sad and so serious that a stranger to the “games” of modern life might think that they were sitting round a post-mortem table with a deceased person laid out on the cloth. An observer, endowed with especial gifts might detect evidences of greed, of anxiety, of despair, of forlorn hope, but to an ordinary looker-on there is little to note beyond a general expression of uneasy boredom.

The Pigeon Shooting.—There is one blot on Monte Carlo—a large, crimson blot—in the form of the pigeon shooting. This diversion takes place on a pleasant green just below the terrace of the Casino, between it and the sea. There lies a level lawn upon which one might expect to see lads and lasses playing croquet; but in the centre of the grass are certain slabs of concrete arranged in a curve with horrible precision. They may be the marks upon which blindfolded criminals are stood when ranged out to be shot, but this execution yard is used for a different purpose.

On the concrete disks, when the sport is in progress, iron traps are placed and into each of these a pigeon, half-crazed with fright, is stuffed. The trap drops open with a clatter, the bird sees before it the quiet blue of heaven, rises on its wings, and in a second is either maimed or dead. If not too badly wounded it may flutter over the fence and fall into the sea to be grabbed by a man in a boat, for some half-dozen boats are always waiting under the lee of the rock for such choice windfalls.

People in some numbers watch this vile massacre from the terrace, but their concern—almost to a man—is with the pigeon. If the pigeon escapes unharmed, as occasionally happens, there is a gasp of relief and gratification. The bird so saved generally alights on the Casino roof and, in course of time, no doubt joins the fearless crowd of pigeons who haunt the roadway and strut among the out-of-door tables of the Café de Paris. There is a curious bond uniting this community of birds, the common tie of having been condemned to death and of having been by accident reprieved.

In pigeon shooting from traps there is not the faintest element of sport. It is merely an exhibition of mean brutality which is totally opposed to the British conception of sport and it is gratifying to note that among the competitors in this contemptible game an English name is uncommon. The terrified pigeon pegged out to be shot at has practically no chance, while the skill displayed by the most apt of the pseudo-sportsmen is of a paltry order.

To realise a turning of the tables it should happen one day that the sides of the trap would drop and reveal, not a shivering pigeon, but a live man-eating tiger who, with his yellow and black stripes showing well against the green, would stalk, snarling, towards the firing party. It would be interesting to see these deadly marksmen bolt screaming right and left and throw themselves into the sea to be picked up by the boatmen on the look-out for wounded pigeons.

The Theatre.—The opera, the concerts and the minor entertainments at Monte Carlo are famous and are allowed to be of very high order. A series of ballets also occupies the season and these too are approved by heads of families. It is to be owned that in most of the ballets a love element is prominent, but the love-making is conducted on such formal and gymnastic lines that it is not likely to encourage imitators.

The young man, according to accepted practice, pursues the lady. In doing so he revolves like a top, while she also gyrates after the manner of that toy. He rubs his chest with his hand to show that his heart is affected. She then lifts her foot above her head to show that she is unmoved by the information. He pursues her again but this time with bounds. She retreats with tiny steps and ultimately takes refuge in the extreme corner of the stage by the footlights. Here she wriggles her shoulders and puts a forefinger in the corner of her mouth. He is much encouraged by these evidences of a dawning amiability and leaps repeatedly into the air. They then dance together with some exuberance and finally he grasps her by the waist and turns her upside down, so that her head rests on the boards. This shows that they are engaged; a conclusion which is approved by a sudden crowd of lightly clad villagers in antics of bewildering violence.

The Dog Show.—A feature of the season at Monte Carlo is the Dog Show. It is held on the terrace and is unique of its kind. It is not really a dog show but rather a dogs’ afternoon party or conversazione, where dogs of both sexes meet, renew acquaintances, gossip after their fashion with much tail-wagging and at times cut one another or quarrel. There are no stands upon which the dogs are staged, no kennels, no baskets with rugs in which they lie curled up and bored to death, no posts to which they can be tied and howl. There are no placards, no cards, no advertisements of dog biscuits, no straw and, indeed, none of the paraphernalia of an actual dog show.

The affair is, in reality, a Show of Dog Owners held for the edification and amusement of the dogs and, incidentally, of others. The dog owners (mostly ladies) are dressed in their very best, as they should be when on show, and are led about by the dogs through a cheerful, rambling crowd. At intervals a man with a megaphone shouts from the bandstand the names of certain dog owners. Whereupon the dogs lead their owners, thus selected, into a circle beneath the megaphone and some judging takes place. There is a general hubbub, much chattering and barking and some craning of necks when an exceptionally pretty owner occupies the ring.

At the end rosettes, as badges of merit, are handed to the fortunate and are affixed to the dogs’ collars. The dog who is pleased with what his owner has won trots off with contentment and with the lady; but the dog who is dissatisfied sits obstinately down, in spite of all protests, and proceeds to remove the offensive emblem with his foot.

Golf.—In the early hours of the day there is often a spectacle provided in Monte Carlo which is difficult to appreciate. A number of persons—young, middle-aged and ancient, male and female—will arise at an unwonted hour, scramble through breakfast and start to climb up a cliff of 3,000 feet. They cannot be making this arduous ascent to see the sun rise, for the sun is already up. They can hardly be contemplating a view from the height, for the hill may be hidden in mist. They could not be hastening to a pilgrimage church to pray, because they do not look devotional enough; nor is there a suggestion of piety in their dress, for they wear boots heavy with nails, knickerbockers and a reckless type of hat.

They are ascending some 3,000 feet under arduous conditions for the purpose of knocking a ball—a small and expensive ball—along the ground with a stick. This is golf; a proceeding that is with many one of the rare joys of life. Golf has many charms and not the least is that it is a game for everyone. It fires the youth with ambition and comforts the aged, for it fosters the delusion that the end of their days is not yet. The inefficient can play with the expert, without heartburnings and without reproach and receive sympathy in the place of sarcasm. The lamb, indeed, can lie down with the lion and now and then bleat, in the golfer’s tongue, “like as we lie.” The man who wishes to be alone can play alone. The man who loves company can “go round” in a party of four and chatter to them all at once and all the time. Golf too is a discipline, for the spirit of golf is hope. The golfer who has abandoned hope is lost. Lost too is the fatalist who knows he is in a bunker before he gets there.

Golf, moreover, is played under pleasant conditions in the open air, among sand dunes, or by sea beaches, or on breezy downs and in light-hearted surroundings; for there are few links that are not picturesque and cheery. It is besides a pleasant game to watch for the human element in it is so interesting. There is, for example, that fascinating disproportion between the effort made and the result that may be attained. The man at the tee stands with rigid limbs, with every muscle tense, with clenched teeth and a fixed glare in the eye. Then comes a swish with a club that—if a sword—would decapitate an ox and, as a result, the ball dribbles languidly a few mocking feet. If the man fails by misapplied violence the lady is apt to fail by moulding her action on the photographic pose of lady players in the society journals. She wants to get to the “follow through” attitude, when her club will be in the air, her face in a good light and the tip of her right shoe just touching the ground.

The caddies too are an interesting company to watch. Being young they are unable to restrain the expression of the emotions and this is often disconcerting. When a fine shot is made the aspect of the caddie is that of serious anxiety, for he has to keep the ball in sight. When a really bad stroke is taken he must laugh and when he is compelled—in order to conceal his laughter—to bury his face in the breast of a fellow-caddie the sight of the convulsed boy, hanging on to a friend, calls for great restraint on the part of the player.

The fragments of English picked up by foreign caddies are always curious and nearly always unhappy. I recall a caddie in Egypt who spoke nothing but Arabic; but who, after a very woeful shot burst out, to my surprise, with the petulant remark, “Hell’s own luck!” I learnt later that he used to “carry” for a profane judge.

An excellent motor-bus service takes the golfer up to the links direct, or, if he prefers it, he can ascend by train to La Turbie and climb the rest of the way by the path. The links are on a breezy plateau just below the peak of Mont Agel and at the height of some 3,000 feet above the sea. It is a plateau that means well, that intends to be orderly but is always backsliding and reverting to savagery. It is constantly tempted to break out into a precipice or lapse into a gorge but restrains itself just in time. Its praiseworthy efforts to become a green plateau are almost pathetic but it gives way often and original sin crops out in the form of horrible rocks.

The result is an area of rugged land of great variety and picturesqueness, a beautiful medley of half-tamed meads and wild boulders, of smooth lawns like sheets of green velvet amid grey and wizened crags. The view is astounding. To the north are the Maritime Alps, peak after peak, deep in snow; to the south is the warm, blue Mediterranean and, often enough, the ghostly island of Corsica lying on the sea like a lilac cloud. On either side is a stretch of coast of immeasurable extent, leading far down into Italy on the east and, on the west, ranging beyond the Lerin Islands and the Esterels to St. Tropez, near Hyères, a distance of some fifty miles. The club house is a model of modern comfort and as the restaurant is controlled by the Hôtel de Paris the golfer and the crowd of visitors can obtain as good a lunch on this bare mountain-top as they would obtain in Monte Carlo and that too with a better appetite. The success of the club is largely due to the untiring efforts of the secretary, Mr. Galbraith Horn, whose geniality, capacity and kindness are held in grateful memory by every visitor to Mont Agel.

Coming back from the links in the motor-bus the whispered conversations that may be overheard are illustrative and will vary much according to the speaker. A fat man may be saying, “The gravy was the best I ever tasted,” and the lean man, “Although I did it in five I had to halve the hole”; while a lady may remark, “Well! how she could come out in that hat I don’t know!”