UNDER SOUTHERN SKIES

For the gambler and the cocotte, the Riviera means merely Monte Carlo. The gambler is drawn by the lure of the green tables in the splendid Casino. The cocotte goes where the money-spending crowd is to be found, where she may show her frocks and her jewels and her beauty, where recklessness and extravagance and excitement are in the air. She gambles, too, carelessly or cannily, according to her temperament, and she loves to make a sensation on the terrace, in the CafÉ de Paris, at Ciro's, or best of all in the Casino, where the apparition that draws attention from the piles of money on the green felt must be startling indeed.

Incidentally she acknowledges that there are wonderful views and dazzling sunshine and invigorating air outside the brilliantly lighted, over-heated Casino, and that these things contribute to her enjoyment; but she is not an ardent nature lover, this Parisienne, and she would find the Riviera deadly dull without the life that centres round the gaming tables.

Even the residential element and the smart hotel set of aristocratic Cannes and Anglo-American Nice, of Cap Martin and Beaulieu and Cimiez and Mentone, feel the fascination of M. Blanc's earthly paradise upon the Monaco promontory and spend considerable time there in the course of the season; but for this class the social season is as important as the gambling, and Monte Carlo is but a single feature of the Riviera scheme.

It has been said that Cannes, Nice, and Monte Carlo represent, respectively, the world, the flesh, and the devil; and the classification is roughly accurate. Cannes has the most exclusive social life along the coast; its villas are occupied by folk whose names rank high in the social blue-books of the European capitals; the registers of its hotels bristle with sounding titles and its swell clubs have membership lists calculated to impress anyone who loves a lord. The Napoule Golf Club at Cannes has a Russian Grand Duke for president and an English Duke for vice-president; and, on the links, counts and barons, belted earls and multi-millionaires, are thick as leaves in Vallambrosa. Even princes and potentates drive off the tees and struggle in the bunkers. One sees rather more of London than of Paris in the crowd, but there are Parisians, too, and they are even more English than the English in their sporting proclivities, for fashion is a more aggressive thing than nature. The whole atmosphere is English at Napoule. From the architecture of the picturesque timbered club-house to the h's of the servants, everything has a fine British flavour, and save for the frocks of the women and the fluent Parisian French dividing honours with English on the links and in the club-house, there is little to remind the guest that he is in France.

Down in the town, and along the famous Promenade de la Croisette, there is a different story. Here, too, a large percentage of the fashionable crowd is English, but the setting is French where it is not Italian. The Croisette, the Promenade des Anglais at Nice, the terrace at Monte Carlo, are three of the most beautiful, the most fashionable, the most amusing promenades in the world, and the idler may spend many profitable hours upon any one of the three; but each has its distinctive flavour just as each of the three towns has its own local colour and its own crowd, though all share alike in the sparkling beauty of the Riviera summer land.

Yachting is an institution even more important than golf in the programme of Cannes. The Cercle Nautique, one of the chief rendezvous for the society set, is exclusive to the last degree, and out in the beautiful harbour splendid sea-going yachts from all parts of Europe and from America are anchored during the season. Some of the yacht owners prefer living in hotels or villas during their sojourn and use the boats for cruising only; but more live aboard their floating palaces, and there is constant going and coming twixt yachts and quai, to the immense entertainment of outsiders who get no nearer than this to the social life at Cannes. Carriages roll up to the landing and deposit wonderfully gowned women and men whose names are whispered knowingly by the watching throng. Launches are waiting to receive the load of fashion and celebrity. There is a tableau of coquetry and chiffons, a shuffling of royal highnesses and wealthy commoners, and the little boats move off toward the yacht, where luncheon will be served on deck under the awnings, to the accompaniment of tinkling mandolins and guitars.

There are worse things even for royalty than to sit at a violet-strewn table under awnings that flap in the soft sea breeze of a sunshiny February day, and, in the intervals of a luncheon prepared by an artist for an epicure, to look off across dimpling blue water to a curving white line of shore where promenaders make bright impressionistic dashes of colour in the sunlight, and to the grove-embowered villas, the imposing, many-pillared hotels, the mediÆval little villages that climb the verdure-clad mountains behind the town.

Cannes is lovely,—far lovelier than Nice in its natural scenery, but Cannes is cold to tourists, dull for those who have not the open sesame to its charmed social circle. The ordinary visitor will find Nice far more gay. Here, too, there is an exclusive villa and hotel set, but it does not dominate the situation as at Cannes. There is welcome and entertainment for everyone at Nice. On the Promenade des Anglais stroll men and women from all countries and all classes, and queer groups collect at "la potiniÈre," the gossip rendezvous which ends the promenade. The new town with its public parks, its fascinating shops, its luxurious hotels and modest hostelries, its gorgeous restaurants and its cheap eating-places, its clubs, its gambling, its flower markets, its tide of restless pleasure seekers, is as gay a place as the world holds when the Riviera season is at its height, and though one may live there cheaply or extravagantly, it would be difficult to live there dully, unless one were a hardened misanthrope; for all things woo to pleasant folly, and jollity is in the air.

To stroll from one's hotel to the famous promenade on a bright morning is to snap one's fingers at carking care. The sunshine is such fluid gold as no northern country knows, the air is fresh, intoxicating, full of warring sea scents and flower perfumes, a sky wonderfully soft, deeply blue is overhead, the Mediterranean is a marvellous changing sea of turquoise and sapphire and amethyst and beryl, with here and there high golden lights where the sun catches a ripple of foam. Boys and girls hold out great handfuls of big, long-stemmed purple violets to you and the fragrance comes sweet and heavy to your nostrils. Women in light summer frocks stroll along the broad white walk, stopping to chat with friends; on the roadway which the promenade borders, roll luxurious private carriages, smart dog-carts, hired fiacres, hotel wagons, all loaded with smiling folk, for one smiles perforce in this world of sunshine and flowers and laughter.

On the inland side of the roadway is a line of hotels and villas and cafÉs and shops, with tropical gardens breaking the line of gleaming white buildings; and in those shops one may find the best that European merchants have to offer to extravagant womankind; for the famous jewellers and milliners and dressmakers of Paris, London, and Vienna have branch establishments here, and the proprietors of the great houses often spend the season in villas at Nice or Monte Carlo and oversee in person their lively Riviera trade.

Paquin, Beer, Doeuillet, and their peers are familiar figures at Nice and Monte Carlo; and these mighty ones of the fashion world may well feel, with a glow of satisfaction, that they are responsible for much of the glittering show that passes in review under their critical eyes.

Nice is not given over wholly to fresh air and promenading.

Down in the Casino of the jetty, a pavilion of many minarets which opens off from the promenade and under whose foundations the sea washes listlessly, there is gambling—trente et quarante, roulette, and, in the more exclusive club-rooms to which one is admitted only by card, baccarat; but gambling is an incident at Nice. All things save gambling are incidental at Monte Carlo, and while a host of folk live in Nice without playing at the jetty Casino or the municipal Casino, but few visitors to Monte Carlo resist the fascination of the gaming tables. There is always a crowd at the jetty Casino after luncheon, lounging, gossiping, gaming, listening to the excellent orchestra; and the crowd about the gambling tables is the mixed and motley crowd one always finds in such a situation, but there are fewer smart folk at the trente et quarante and roulette tables than one sees at corresponding tables in Monte Carlo. The fashionables of Nice choose the baccarat club-rooms for their rendezvous, and it is there that you must go to see modish women and well-known men gossiping, flirting, and playing high.

There is a popular restaurant adjoining the gambling rooms,—a gorgeous restaurant, brilliant with scarlet lacquer and Chinese decorations, though chop suey is not on the menu,—and many of the baccarat players dine or sup there; but there are so many places in which to lunch or dine or sup in Nice that one may find a meal to suit any palate, and a price to suit any purse.

The Helder has the same proprietor as Armenonville and the CafÉ de Paris, and much the same crowd. The Regence is the Helder's great rival, and after these comes a long line of town restaurants, each with its individual claim upon the diner's attention, while out on the hills and all along the coast are famous hotel restaurants and cafÉs to which the gay Nicois resort.

There is tea-drinking, too, and the places where women flock at the tea hour are many, but while my lady of aristocratic Cannes is likely to drink her tea at the Cercle Nautique or in some other exclusive haunt, Madame of Nice frequents tea-rooms such as those of Paris; and tea hour at a place like Vogades offers an interesting study in femininity, though the crowd is frightfully mixed and, sometimes, unconscionably gay.

It is during carnival time that gaiety becomes a trifle furious at Vogades. The regular winter visitors and residents of Nice frown upon King Carnival and dread his advent; but for the transient visitor the show is an amusing one and the common folk of Nice throw themselves into the celebration with a gay abandon that sometimes approaches objectionable license. Who cares whether a few fastidious critics are holding aloof from carnival gaieties when ninety per cent of the motley populace of Nice is eating, drinking, dancing, and making merry, when fun and folly are running riot, when all the town is ablaze with garlands of electric lights and artificial flowers, when confetti is raining through the air and grotesque figures fill the streets.

Vulgar, of course. All carnivals are vulgar and the line between mirth and horse-play is easily crossed, but it is a pity not to see the carnival at Nice at least once, and not to enter into the spirit of the thing, without a handicap of aristocratic prejudices. The age of spontaneous mummery is past and carnival foolery has a strained and artificial note in this self-conscious day, but one may be merry in Nice when King Carnival sits enthroned and a multitude, hiding its irresponsibility behind masks, gives itself up to folly.

All through the season there are fÊtes in Nice. The Battle of Flowers is more like the real thing than is the Parisian imitation; the Corso Automobile Fleuri brings out a brave array of flower-decorated automobiles; the children's flower fÊte is the prettiest thing of its kind in Europe; and there is a water fÊte in the bay of Villefranche, where flower-decorated boats and floats loaded with musicians and merry-makers swarm on the blue water, and flower battles rage amid music and laughter and the murmur of the waves. Grim war-vessels are usually lying in the harbour and the revellers row out to pelt the monsters derisively with flowers and jests, and to aim violet bunches impartially at the cannon's mouth and the ranking officer's head.

Yes, Nice is gay,—absurdly gay; and if, at its gayest, it is not smart, still one will see the loveliest of Parisian toilettes in the restaurants and the Casino, and on the promenade.

There are lovely villas in Nice, hidden away, even in the more crowded parts of the town, among palms and aloes and banana trees and eucalyptus, and gay with yellow mimosa and other flowering things while behind the town on the hillsides are villas lovelier still, gleaming white amid groves of orange and lemon trees and tropical vegetation, and overlooking shore and sea. Wherever there is space for them flowers grow, and every breath of air is sweet-scented. In the distance, beyond the grey-green slopes where the olives thrive, are misty, snow-capped mountains, and far away along the coast stretches the white thread of the Corniche road, that road of marvellous views and picturesque surprises, which is the heart's delight of the motor maniacs on the Riviera.

Motoring is a passion with the Riviera crowd as with every holiday crowd to-day, and though many of the roads are too steep and narrow and rugged for motors, or even for comfortable driving, the few that are practicable are beautiful enough not to grow monotonous. From one resort to another, all along the coast, the automobiles go scudding, and even the steep hills of Monte Carlo swarm with puffing cars. A little danger more or less makes small impression upon the Monte Carlo crowd. Skidding recklessly down hill is, figuratively speaking, the metier of so many of the throng that haunts the Casino and fills the great hotels.

Life at Monte Carlo is essentially sensational. A continual whirl of excitement seems to be the ideal of the habituÉ, and the class that centres there spends money recklessly, without reserve and without calculation. There are gamblers who haven't the money to spend; but they live cheaply at some one of the nearby resorts, where they may lose themselves between Casino hours, and in the little town of fine hotels and cafÉs and shops which clings to the skirts of the Casino, life goes to a merry tune. Perhaps the unwholesome fever of the gaming rooms infects the district; but, whatever the cause, Monte Carlo sees little of the sanely joyous life that may be found at other Riviera resorts. Everything is brilliant, luxurious, dramatic, but of restfulness and simple pleasure the beautiful spot knows nothing, and though, for a few days, even the fastidious traveller may be well amused there, for a longer stay it is wise to go outside of the miasmic circle.

The incongruity between drama and setting is one of the most striking things about the place, though familiarity dulls the first swift impression of the contrast. If ever man diverted God-given beauty to the devil's uses, he has done it there upon the Monaco shore, and the serpent was no more out of place in Paradise than is a gambling Casino on that picturesque promontory overlooking the Mediterranean—but the daughters of Eve have smiled upon the Casino as their ancestors smiled upon the serpent, and though their gambling has been for smaller stakes than hers, they have made a somewhat spectacular record of their own. The feminine element at Monte Carlo is one of the most characteristic and dramatic features of the resort. Nowhere else in the world will one see women of all classes gambling openly and heavily; nowhere else are the alpha and omega of feminine folly so sharply and obviously contrasted—and so gaily and recklessly ignored. Around the tables, from opening until closing hour, crowd women derelicts; each train that stops at the station below the wonderful terraces brings more. The veriest ingÉnue might read the stories of wreck and disaster, yet the warning makes not the faintest impression upon the fair feminine craft steering head on toward the rocks.

How can Fifi of the wonderful frocks and jewels guess that she will lose once too often at the little green tables, that the day of adorers ready and eager to pay her losses will pass, that youth and beauty will make way for such shrivelled and haggard age as that of the painted and bedizened harpies who haunt the gaming rooms, staking their few francs and watching for opportunities of making way with the stakes of other players.

For the average casual visitor to Monte Carlo, these hags of the Casino are among the sharpest and cleanest cut of first impressions. Later one grows used to them, ignores them, allows them to take their places in the shifting human panorama that is in its way as fascinating as the roulette and trente et quarante which brings the crowd together; but at first these hideous old women of the furrowed faces plastered with rouge, of the furtive eyes, of the loose lips, the trembling claw-like hands, the dirty laces, the false jewels, have a hateful fascination, obscure all other impressions.

There are many of the harpies living entirely by fraud, and though croupiers, detectives, and attendants know some of them and suspect others, it seems impossible to keep them out of the Casino. Occasionally the doors are barred to someone, but under the present administration admission rules are more lax than they were in the old days, and the whole character of the Casino crowd, while perhaps not more vicious, is certainly more vulgar than it was under M. Blanc's rÉgime.

The system of the women thieves is a simple one. An excited crowd surrounds a roulette table; many of the players know comparatively little about the game. The stakes are placed, money is lost or won, and raked in or distributed, in less time than is required for the telling of it. While a novice hesitates, wondering whether the money on a certain number is really hers, a yellow hand reaches across her shoulder and snatches the stakes. Even if the victim is sure that she knows the offender, she hesitates to make a scene, to be implicated in a gaming-room scandal, and the thief audaciously counts upon this immunity. Sometimes, however, an attendant sees the transaction and lays a firm hand upon the old woman's arm before she can get away. Or perhaps the croupier of the immobile face and the eyes that see all things notices the hand closing upon money to which it has no right and brings his rake down sharply upon the thin wrist in time to stop the move.

There are other wrinkled and haggard old women in the Casino crowd,—women less contemptible, more pitiable, but unpleasant sights for all that. They come to the gambling rooms to play, not to steal; but the gambling fever has burned out all that was pure womanly in them and nothing is left to them in life save the vice they hug to their hearts. Some of them have been playing there ever since the first years of the Casino, missing never a day from the opening to the closing of the season, and usually staying all day long in the hot, ill-ventilated rooms. They have but little money and they play cautiously, watching the run of the game, making innumerable notes in little note-books, taking no great risks.

One Russian princess is among the number. Old habituÉs of the Casino say that when she came there first, twenty-five years ago, she was beautiful, superbly gowned, magnificently bejewelled, but gaming is in the Russian blood and the princess was a born gambler. She squandered her fortune, pawned her jewels, sank lower and lower in the gambling mire, gave herself up more and more unreservedly to her absorbing passion. To-day, she lives in a cheap pension at Mentone and belongs to the class known in Monte Carlo as "the bread-winners,"—a class of gamblers making a regular daily visit to the Casino, playing until perhaps ten, fifteen, or fifty francs ahead of the bank, and then leaving. If one is content with making a mere daily pittance out of the tables, the thing can be surely and systematically done; and, every morning the first train brings an army of these bread-winners, together with hundreds of bolder gamblers. There is always a crowd waiting at the Casino doors when they are opened, always a wild scramble for the chairs around the tables; and, once comfortably seated, these early comers are usually good for the day, or at least until dinner-time. They are the most economical and persistent, though not the most profitable, of the Casino's patrons.

Fashionable folk favour shorter gambling hours. If Madame is staying at one of the Monte Carlo hotels,—at the famous HÔtel de Paris, let us say, a hotel beloved of Parisian demi-mondaines and their satellites, but patronized by cosmopolitan great folk as well,—she arises very late and has her breakfast on a terrace with a sunlit sapphire sea stretching out before her and an awning sheltering her from the too ardent sun. The chances are that it is a delectable breakfast, for there is good cooking in Monte Carlo. The prodigal crowd that spends its money there demands high living, and the CafÉ de Paris, with its Indian interior and its famous grill-room, has seen gay dinners and suppers in its time and has appropriated a generous share of the winnings of lucky gamblers, beside helping the Casino to rid the unlucky player of his money.

Ciro's, too, has played its part in nineteenth-century romance and scandal and had its share in the Monte Carlo harvest. The proprietor, an energetic and diplomatic Italian, has made a large fortune and deserves it, for he can produce for his cosmopolitan patrons on demand any dish from buckwheat cakes to the most delicate frittura, and any drink from vodka to Jersey apple-jack. Perhaps that is stating the case too strongly, but he is a remarkable restaurateur, this Ciro.

These are but two restaurants of the many; and if one tires of the town, there is the mountain restaurant at la Turbie, to which one climbs by a funicular and where the air is keen and cool from the snowy mountain peaks. Even the view alone is worth the trip to la Turbie; for, from the restaurant terrace, one looks down upon Monaco with its palace and cathedral, upon Monte Carlo with its snowy villas and Casino amid their groves and gardens, and upon miles of summer sea.

When dÉjeuner is ended there are many ways of passing what is left of the day. The terrace is thronged during the late morning hours, and if one has breakfasted early enough there is time for a stroll there—a stroll that calls for a smart costume, if one makes pretence of being truly chic. Up and down the beautiful promenade saunter the idlers—a crowd as interesting and as mixed as that of the promenade des Anglais or the promenade at Trouville. Past they file, rosy-cheeked, middle-class Englishwomen in ill-fitting frocks, consummately modish Parisiennes, notorious in Monte Carlo as at home, fat German Jewesses, American girls chaperoning their tired and patient parents, French, American, and English actresses, great ladies from all countries, men of every type, from hard-faced chevalier d'industrie to reigning monarch, from gilded youth to elderly rouÉ.

One sees many a new fashion note on the Monte Carlo terrace, and, later, costumes still more chic are in evidence at the Casino concert, to which come music lovers from all the neighbouring resorts, for the Monte Carlo orchestra is one of the best in Europe and even moralists who have serious scruples to forbid their gambling do not hesitate to take advantage of the concerts provided by the profits of the tables.

For the sporting contingent there is driving and motoring during the early afternoon, before the chill creeps into the air; and on the terrace overlooking the grounds of the International Pigeon Shooting Club there is always a crowd watching the shooting below. Butchery rather than sport, this pigeon shooting, but the Monte Carlo club is the most famous in the world and draws the crack shots from all countries. Betting runs high among the sportsmen and the onlookers, and the club events are a great source of entertainment to those who have heart and stomach for such sport.

After the tea hour, the Casino begins to fill with the crowd that is its mainstay, the high-playing, heavily plunging, extravagant crowd, willing to buy excitement at any price, and some of the heaviest gambling is done in those hours just before the dinner. The hush grows more pronounced, more oppressive, and the croupier's monotonous voice sounds more clearly in its maddening iteration, "Messieurs, Mesdames, faites vos jeux.—Les jeux sont faits. Rien ne va plus."

Every seat at the tables is filled, crowds are clustering behind the chairs, leaning forward to play, watching with excitement an unusual run of good or bad luck, but quiet, intent, absorbed. There is never noise and confusion, never an outbreak that can create scandal. A battalion of official employees attends to that, and quickly, effectually suppresses any objectionable scene.

Monsieur FranÇois Blanc, who was responsible for Monte Carlo, was fond of saying that he had made and kept the place "absolutely respectable." He is dead now, this M. Blanc, but before he died he built a cathedral not far from his Casino, and in a mortuary chapel of the cathedral reposes the old Prince of Monaco, who granted to M. Blanc the rights that made Monte Carlo possible.

The scoffer smiles at that cathedral; and yet M. Blanc offered it to le bon Dieu in all sincerity. He was a quiet, unpretentious little man, devoted to his family, charitable, abstemious in his habits, playing no game save billiards, gambling not at all, a good man so far as personal life went, and without scruples concerning his gambling paradise. He insisted rigidly that play at Monte Carlo should be under absolutely fair conditions. As for running a great gambling establishment—it was a business like another. He was not ashamed of his metier and allowed no threats nor pleas nor argument to disturb him. Men and women would gamble.—Eh bien, here was a beautiful place in which they might indulge their propensity without fear of dishonest treatment. If they ruined themselves, if they committed suicide,—that was their affair. They would have done the same thing elsewhere and he would have preferred their doing it elsewhere, for suicides and scenes interfered somewhat with prosperous business. A host of detectives and attendants was employed by M. Blanc to prevent suicide or hush it up if it occurred, and an official department was established for the purpose of furnishing unlucky patrons of the Casino with money enough to betake themselves elsewhere. Ruined gamblers were eloquently urged not to die upon the premises. Railroad tickets and certain sums of money were supplied to worthy applicants to whose hard luck and financial collapse officials of the gambling rooms could testify. The system was not, however, purely charitable,—M. Blanc did not believe in pauperizing the poor. An I. O. U. was accepted in exchange for funds supplied, and it was understood that this note must be met before the holder could ever again be admitted to the Casino. Some time ago statistics showed that forty thousand pounds had been distributed by this department of ways and means—but that thirty thousand pounds had been repaid. From which one may argue a large proportion of human integrity or of gambling mania, as one is optimist or cynic.

M. Blanc had made his fortune in administering the gambling affairs of Homburg and Baden Baden. When Germany shut down upon gambling he looked about for a place in which he could establish a gambling resort without fear of interference from a paternal government, and his shrewd eye fell upon the little principality of Monaco. His Royal Highness the Prince of Monaco, who was absolute ruler of this little kingdom three and a half miles long by one mile wide, came of an illustrious line of gentlemanly pirates, and since piracy had fallen from favour in the Mediterranean, his revenues were not so princely as his title and palace. He was pleased to make over his piratical rights to M. Blanc in consideration of an annual subsidy which gave him an income really royal. Incidentally the Frenchman agreed to attend to the municipal affairs of the province, to free the subjects of the Prince from all taxation, and to guarantee that no one of them should be allowed to enter the Casino. An excellent bargain from a material view-point the old Prince made. His successor, Albert I, the scholarly scientist and Prince who now lives in the ancient palace of the Grimaldis, where the little town of Monaco huddles on its isolated rock, facing the Monte Carlo fairyland across the port of Condamine, has scruples concerning the source of his income, it is said, but the Monte Carlo lease, which is held by a syndicate since M. Blanc's death, has until 1913 to run. Then we shall see what we shall see. The Prince, who is a French nobleman, has French revenues which would keep him from penury, and he is a man of simple tastes; but it would be a sacrifice for a saint to give up a royal fortune for a scruple, and one can hardly expect a worldly monarch to court canonization in such fashion.

Once in possession of his promontory, M. Blanc proceeded to spend a fortune upon it. A gambling enterprise had already been tried there but had failed, partly through mismanagement, partly because the place was inaccessible, visitors being obliged to arrive by water and be taken ashore in small boats.

The natural location was, however, beautiful beyond description, and M. Blanc had the genius to appreciate his opportunity. The architect of the Paris Opera House was called into consultation and a five-million-dollar Casino was built. Everything that art and money could do to make the gambling rooms, the corridors, the concert hall, the theatre, luxurious and beautiful was done. Splendid terraces, gardens, fountains, were added; a great reading-room was supplied with the most complete collection of periodical literature in the world; the finest of classical concerts were given in the concert-hall; the best artists of Paris were engaged to present the latest and most successful Parisian plays in the little jewel of a theatre; capitalists were induced to build a railroad to the place and a big elevator was constructed to carry up from the trains all who did not care to climb the terraces; a luxurious cafÉ was installed in the Casino grounds.

M. Blanc was a frugal man, but he could scatter money like chaff for a purpose, and he fulfilled his purpose. The fame of Monte Carlo spread far and wide. Visitors flocked there from all over the world, and the time was short indeed before the originator s money had returned to him with interest many times compounded. To-day, after the income of the Prince is handed over to him, after the taxes of the principality are settled, after the immense staff of official employees, the musicians, the artists, are paid, after the repairs and running expenses have been provided for, the stockholders divide an annual profit of from two million to two million five hundred thousand dollars. A profitable business, as M. Blanc foresaw when he made his investment.

The syndicate which now holds the lease and manages the palace follows as far as possible the system of M. Blanc, but the body has not the old manager's genius for doing the wrong thing in exactly the right way, and the place was not what it once was. M. Blanc had made the Casino a club and so retained the right to bar or eject whom he would. In the old days the age limit was strictly observed. Now one sees mere boys and girls at the tables. For a long time a frock coat and high hat in the daytime, and evening dress after six, were de rigeur, and women's toilettes were carefully considered. Lord Salisbury and his wife were once refused admission at the door because the Premier wore a shabby old felt hat and tweeds, and a celebrated actress who once appeared in a highly Æsthetic costume was told she could enter after going home and changing her dÉshabillÉ.

To-day, everything from dress clothes to bicycle costume is permissible in the Casino, though a careful toilet is the rule, and a host of very shabby and disreputable gamblers mingles with the more aristocratic set. The crowd is more sordid, more vulgar, less chic than of old. Fewer high-class English and French patronize the tables, and the German Jews who have taken their places have not improved the general tone of the throng.

But all this the ordinary visitor does not know, and even now the place is as fascinating as it is unwholesome.

In the evening come the most brilliant and spectacular hours of the Casino day. Then one sees the exquisite frocks, the superb jewels, the celebrities of good and ill repute. The women wear elaborate evening dress, usually topped by a picture hat, and though many mondaines avoid conspicuous Casino toilettes, the demi-mondaines vie with each other in gorgeousness of attire.

Some of these rivalries have afforded tremendous entertainment for onlookers who appreciated the moves in the feminine game. Liane de Pougy and la belle Otero, for example, have contributed largely to the Monte Carlo amusement programme during recent years. Deadly rivals these two, who fought their battles wherever they went in Fashion's train, in Paris, at Trouville, at Monte Carlo. Both were lionnes of the most formidable type, leaving a wake of ruin and disaster behind them, devouring fortunes with Brobdignagian voracity, plunging into the maddest extravagances. Men raved over their beauty, though cooler-headed critics insisted that Otero was only a rather coarse and common Spanish type, with bold, staring eyes, a cruel, sensuous mouth, and a good figure, while de Pougy, with her long neck and cat-in-the-cream expression, deserved no beauty prize.

The toilettes of the two were legion and beggared description. Their jewels were a proverb.

One night, at the Casino, one of the rivals appeared wearing all her jewels, and even the maddest gambler stopped his play to look at her. From head to foot she was ablaze with precious stones of the finest water, diamonds, rubies, sapphires, emeralds, and pearls, gleaming on throat and arms and fingers and in her hair, covering her bodice, fastened upon her skirts.

The achievement was the sensation of the season. Nothing else was spoken of the next day, and triumph was written large upon the face of the wearer of the jewels; but she had reckoned without her host. The Casino was more crowded than usual on the following evening. Curious folk went to see how one beauty would carry off her victory and how the other would accept her defeat. The triumphant one was handsome, beaming, self-satisfied, but her rival was late in coming and gossip whispered that something dramatic was to be expected.

It occurred.

Down the length of the gambling rooms walked the woman for whom the crowd was waiting. She was perfectly gowned, but with an exquisite and elaborate simplicity, with a good taste beyond question. Behind her came her maid decked in jewels from coiffure to slipper toe, enjoying her part in the comedy, yet awed by the fortune she carried with her.

No words were necessary, the most unlettered could read the retort. Madame also had jewels—as many and as fine as those of her rival. If anyone doubted that fact, let him observe. But as for wearing all one's jewels at once,—impossible for a woman of taste!

The reign of la belle Otero is over. Liane de Pougy's tenure of favour is very uncertain, but they have furnished the Riviera with a wealth of gossip in their time. Monte Carlo would miss their annual duel, were there not younger favourites, as beautiful and as shameless, to air their toilettes and jewels and jealousies in M. Blanc's "absolutely respectable" rendezvous.

Few women go to Monte Carlo without trying their luck at the tables, though the fall from grace on the part of the ordinary tourist may mean only a few francs lost or won. Starry-eyed young girls, staid matrons with respectability stamped upon their brows, stern, elderly spinsters—all may be seen at the roulette board where small stakes may be hazarded; but they are the novices, the transients who are tasting the new experience with a fearful joy. The seasoned and systematic woman gambler is another thing. So is the reckless woman who does not bother about system and risks large sums as lightly as she waves her fan, and with far less calculation.

Langtry belonged to this last class. In her heyday, one might see her, charmingly gowned, radiantly beautiful, twisting up thousand-franc notes and tossing them on the table to lie wherever they might fall, losing as carelessly as she won and far more often than she won.

Otero and de Pougy, and many of their guild, are of the shrewd and canny type, gambling to win, and taking the game of chance seriously, though worrying little over losses and throwing away winnings with both hands. The brilliant jewelry shops and the Mont de PietÉ of Monte Carlo are equally prosperous. The winners buy jewels, the losers pawn them,—but, on the whole, it is the men who gamble heavily. Three fourths of the women who have money enough to play extravagantly care more about what they wear to the Casino than about what they win or lose, would rather win at hearts and chiffons than at roulette. Occasionally a woman, like the old Russian princess, ruins herself dramatically at Monte Carlo, but more often it is the petty woman gambler who comes to grief—the woman who has only a little money and no resources to draw upon when that little is swallowed up. Not long ago six little American chorus girls, who had heard much about the gaiety and extravagance of Monte Carlo, and had conceived the idea that between luck at gambling and luck at love a half-dozen pretty Americans might corner considerable of the gaiety and of the wherewithal for extravagance, went down to the Riviera and tried trente et quarante.

A few weeks later, when they were penniless, miserable, absolutely stranded, without money either to stay or to go home, Sybil Sanderson heard of their plight and played good angel for the six homesick, disillusioned, singed little moths. The flames are cruel at Monte Carlo.

But it is the man who really supports the Casino, the man who squanders fortunes at the tables, the man who evolves infallible systems, who gives himself up utterly to the gambling, who commits suicide on the terrace, or breaks the bank.

Suicides are few, and the few are carefully covered up, concealed. The management even denies that they occur, but ugly rumours are persistent and many seem to be backed by facts. Detectives are eternally vigilant to suppress scandal. They rise from the ground, they fall from the trees, they follow the lucky winner to his hotel or train in order to see that he is not waylaid and murdered or robbed by thugs, as has happened before now, they shadow desperate losers and prevent ugly scenes, they instruct the penniless where to find the benevolent gentleman who is willing to furnish transportation away from Monte Carlo for the human sponge that has been squeezed dry.

The bank breakers are even fewer than the suicides. In the old days, a certain amount of money was allowed to each table for one day. If the bank lost that amount, the table went out of commission for the rest of the session; but now, if a lucky player breaks the bank, it means only a wait of a few minutes until a new package of money can be brought from the vaults. When the money arrives, play goes on.

Charles Wells, an engineer, was the man whose spectacular winnings inspired the song concerning "the man who broke the bank at Monte Carlo," but many another man has done the thing and some of them have repeated the operation several times. There, for instance, was Garcia, who broke the bank again and again and was a nine days' wonder at Monte Carlo. He died a wretched death in the slums of Paris, that lucky Garcia.

And there was a New York salesman among the bank breakers. Some of the older New York business men may remember him, for he was a popular fellow and he cut a wide swath in Europe. First he broke the bank at Monte Carlo,—broke it with fine spirit and Éclat and was the envied hero of the hour. Then he went to Paris and opened a gambling place that quickly became famous. Baccarat was the game, and the New Yorker's luck held. He could not lose. His name was known all over Europe. Paris gave him the title of Le Roi Baccarat, and in the morning papers the latest doings of the baccarat king were as much a matter of course as the stock market reports.

Of course the luck changed. It always does. One day the baccarat king began to lose, and he was as persistent in losing as he had been in winning. The close air of the gambling rooms had affected his lungs and his health went with his money. One of the many women who had loved him in his brilliant day, took him, a consumptive pauper, to her lodgings, and gave him shelter, food, and care, but she had no money to do more. Finally several of the man's old friends and business associates in New York heard of his condition and sent money to bring him home. He came, a dying man, and a little later the same friends contributed the money to bury him.

Histories of that sort are common among the men who have broken the bank at Monte Carlo.

As for the Casino management, it does not lament when some one breaks the bank. Far from it. Such a run of luck advertises the fairness of the game and encourages gamblers. The syndicate is frankly pleased when anyone wins in spectacular fashion—or in any fashion whatsoever, for winning only fans the gambling fever and in the end it is always the bank that wins. The old saying launched in M. Blanc's day is true: "C'est encore rouge qui perd, et encore noir, mais toujours Blanc qui gagne."

The bank of Monte Carlo is honest as the Bank of England. No hint of trickery has ever been associated with it, but outside the Casino there are gambling resorts of a different character. It is said that more money is lost at the private gambling clubs of Nice in a night than at Monte Carlo in a week; and whether or not this is true, it is certain that more men are ruined in these outside gambling hells than in the Casino. The game at the latter place is fair; only cash stakes are allowed; there is no bar and anyone drunk enough to make a scene is expelled. At many of the private clubs the play is dishonest; I. O. U's are accepted; and a drunken fool may gamble away not only all he has with him, but all he has elsewhere or ever expects to have, and more. Not all of the suicides along the Riviera are due to M. Blanc's gambling palace.

It is difficult to keep away from the subject of the gambling when one talks of Monte Carlo. A famous show of frocks and jewels and women is on view there; the fashions of the coming summer are launched there; the social game is played with verve and zest there; But, at a distance, one remembers rather the crowd around the green tables under the great chandeliers, the flushed faces, the twitching mouths, the trembling hands, and the uncanny, oppressive, breathless hush that follows the croupier's "Rien ne va plus."