Alone | Page 7

only a fool would reveal their whereabouts. Since, however,
I hope so to order my remaining days of life as never to be obliged to
return to these gimcrack regions, there is no inducement for
withholding the name of the Merle Blanc at Monte Carlo, a quite
unpretentious place of entertainment that well deserves its name--white
blackbirds being rather scarcer here than elsewhere. The food is
excellent--it has a cachet of its own; the wine more than merely good.
And this is surprising, for the local mixtures (either Italian stuff which
is dumped down in shiploads at Nice, Marseille, Cette, etc., or else the
poor though sometimes aromatic product of the Var) are not gratifying
to the palate. One imbibes them, none the less, in preference to
anything else, as it is a peculiarity of what goes under the name of wine
hereabouts that the more you pay for it, the worse it tastes. If you
adventure into the Olympic spheres of Chateau Lafite and so forth, you
may put your trust in God, or in a blue pill. Chateau Cassis would be a
good name for these finer vintages, seeing that the harmless black
currant enters largely into their composition, though not in sufficient

quantity to render them wholly innocuous. Which suggests a little
problem for the oenophilist. What difference of soil or exposure or
climate or treatment can explain the fact that Mentone is utterly
deficient in anything drinkable of native origin, whereas Ventimiglia, a
stone's throw eastwards, can boast of its San Biagio, Rossese, Latte,
Dolceacqua and other noble growths, the like of which are not to be
found along the whole length of the French Riviera?
Having pastured the inner man, to his complete satisfaction, at the
hospitable Merle Blanc, our traveller will do well to pasture his eyes on
the plants in the Casino gardens. Whoever wants to see flowers and
trees on their best behaviour, must come to Monte Carlo, where the
spick-and-span Riviera note is at its highest development. Not a leaf is
out of place; they have evidently been groomed and tubbed and
manicured from the hour of their birth. And yet--is it possible? Lurking
among all this modern splendour of vegetation, as though ashamed to
show their faces, may be discerned a few lowly olive trees. Well may
they skulk! For these are the Todas and Veddahs, the aboriginals of
Monte Carlo, who peopled its sunny slopes in long-forgotten days of
rustic life--once lords of the soil, now pariahs. What are they doing
here? And how comes it that the eyesore has not yet been detected and
uprooted by those keen-sighted authorities that perform such wonders
in making the visitor feel at home, and hush up with miraculous
dexterity everything in the nature of a public scandal?
In exemplification whereof, let me tell a trivial Riviera tale. There was
an Englishwoman here, one of those indestructible modern ladies who
breakfast off an ether cocktail and half a dozen aspirins and feel all the
better for it, and who, one day, found herself losing rather heavily at the
tables. "Another aspirin is going to turn my luck," she thought, and
therewith swallowed surreptitiously her last tabloid of the panacea. Not
unobserved, however; for straightway two elegant gentlemen--they
might have been Russian princes--pounced upon her and led her to that
underground operating-room where a kindly physician is in perennial
attendance. He brushed aside her explanations.
"It would be a thousand pities for so charming a lady to poison herself.
But since you wish to take that step, why choose the Casino which has
a reputation to keep up? Are there not hotels----"
"I tell you it was only aspirin."

"Alas, we are sufficiently familiar with that tale! Now, Madam, let us
not lose a moment! It is a question of life and death."
"Aspirin, I tell you----"
"Kindly submit, or the three of us will be obliged to employ force."
The stomach-pump was produced.
It is the drawback of all sea-side places that half the landscape is
unavailable for purposes of human locomotion, being covered by
useless water. Mentone is more unfortunate than most of them, for its
Hinterland is so cloven and contorted that unless you keep on the main
roads, or content yourself with short but pleasant strolls, you will soon
find all progress barred by some natural obstruction. And one really
cannot walk along the esplanade all day long, though it is worth while,
once in a lifetime, continuing that promenade as far as Cap Martin, if
only in memory of the inspiration which Symonds drew therefrom.
Who, he asks--who can resist the influence of Greek ideas at the Cape
St. Martin? Anybody can, nowadays. The place is encrusted with smug
villas of parvenus (wherein we include the Empress Eugénie), to say