Mentone, Cairo, and Corfu

"Is this a school?" asked Verney, in Italian.

She nodded shyly, and ran away, but soon returned accompanied by a Sister, or nun, who, with a mixture of politeness and timidity, asked if we wished to see their schools. Of course we wished to see everything, and going up the broad stairway, we were ushered into an unexpected and remarkable apartment.

"We came to see an infant school, and we find a row of noblemen," said Baker. "They must be all the Dorias upon their native heath!"

The "heath" was the wall, upon which, in black frames, were ranged forty-two portraits in a long procession going around three sides of the great room, which must have been fifty feet in length. At the head of the apartment was a picture seven feet square, representing a full-blooming lady in a long-bodied white satin dress, with an extraordinary structure of plumes and pearls on her head, accompanied by a stately little heir in a pink satin court suit, and several younger children. One grim, dark old man in red, farther down the hall, was "Roberto: Seigneur Dolce Acqua. Anno 1270." A dame in yellow brocade, with hoop, ruff, and jewels, and a little curly dog under her arm, was "Brigida: Domina Dolce Acqua. 1290."

"So they carried dogs in that way then as well as now," observed Janet.

The Mother Superior now came in. She informed us that this was the château of the Dorias, built after their castle was destroyed, and occupied by descendants of the family until a comparatively recent period. Its plain exterior, extending across one end of the little square, we had not especially distinguished from the other buildings which joined it, forming the usual continuous wall of the Riviera towns. The château was now a convent and school. There were benches across one side of the large apartment where the village children were already assembled under the black-framed portraits, but there was not much studying that day, I think, save a study of strangers.

"Here is the real treasure," said Verney.

It was a chimney-piece of stone, extending across one end of the room, richly carved with various devices in relief, figures, and ornaments, and a row of heads on shields across the front, now the profile of an old bearded man looking out, and now that of a youth in armor. It was fifteen feet high, and a remarkably fine piece of work.

"Quite thrown away here," said Miss Graves.

"Oh, I don't know; the portraits can see it," replied Janet.

The Mother Superior conducted us all over the château, reserving only the corridor where were her own and the Sisters' apartments. The dignified stone stairway with its broad stone steps extended unchanged to the top of the house.

"In the matter of stairways," I said, "I must acknowledge that our New World ideas are deficient. We have spacious rooms, broad windows, high ceilings, but such a stairway as this is beyond us."

The empty sunny rooms above were gayly painted in fresco. At one end of the house a door opened into a little latticed balcony, into which we stepped, finding ourselves in an adjoining church, high up on the wall at one side of the altar. Here the Sisters came to pray, and as we departed, one of them glided in and knelt down in the dusky corner.

"Perhaps she is going to pray for us," said Inness.

"I am sure we need it," replied Janet, seriously.

In the garret was a Sedan-chair, once elaborately gilded.

"I suppose they went down to Ventimiglia in that," said Baker – "those fine old dames below."

From one of the rooms on the second floor opened a little cell or closet, part of whose flooring had been removed, showing a hollow space beneath following the massive exterior wall.

"Here," said the Mother Superior, "the papers of the family were concealed at the approach of the first Napoleon, and not taken out for a number of years. The flooring has never been replaced."

The Mother Superior spoke only Italian, which Verney translated, much to the envy of the younger men. The Professor was not with us, for as soon as he learned that the place was "papist" he departed, although Inness suggested that the street was papist also, and likewise the very air must be redolent of Rome. But the Professor was an example of "cœlum, non animum, mutant, qui trans mare currunt," and quite determined to be as Protestant in Italy as he was in Connecticut. He would not desert his colors because under a foreign sky, as so many Americans desert them.

The Mother now conducted us to a little square parlor, with south windows opening upon a balcony full of pots of flowers; the walls and ceiling of this little room were glowing with color – paintings in fresco more suited to the Dorias, I fancy, than to the "Sisters of the Snow," for this was the poetical name of the little black-robed band. In this worldly little room we found wine waiting for us, and grapes which were almost raisins: we had never seen them in transition before. The wine was excellent, and Mrs. Trescott partook with much graciousness. After partaking, she employed Verney in translating to the Mother a number of her own characteristic sentences. But Verney must have altered them somewhat en route, for I hardly think the Mother would have remained so calmly placid if she had comprehended that "this whole scene – the grapes, the wine, and the frescos" – reminded Mrs. Trescott of "Cleopatra, and of Sardanapalus and his golden flagons." Presently two of the Sisters entered with coffee which they had prepared for us; after serving it, they retired to a corner, where they stood gently regarding us. Then another entered, and then another, unobtrusively taking their places beside the others. It was interesting to notice the simplicity of their mild gaze; although brown and middle-aged, their expression was like that of little children. When they learned that some of us were from America they were much impressed, and looked at each other silently.

"I suppose it does not seem to them but a little while since Columbus discovered us," said Baker.

At last it was time for us to go: we bade the little group farewell, and left some coins "for their poor."

"Though we may not meet on earth, we shall see you all again in heaven," said the Mother, and all the Sisters bowed assent. They accompanied us down to the outer door, and waved their hands in adieu as we crossed the little square. When, at the other side, we turned to look back, we saw their black skirts retiring up the stairway to their little school.

"Farewell, Sisters of the Snow," said Janet. "May we all so live as to keep that rendezvous you have given us!"

The carriages were now ordered, and Margaret and Lloyd summoned from the castle tower. We were standing at the door of the Desired Inn, collecting our baskets and wraps, when the Professor appeared with a long narrow parcel in his hand. This he stowed away carefully in one of the carriages, changing its position several times, as if anxious it should be carried safely. While he was thus engaged in his absorbed, near-sighted way, Inness came down the stone stairs from the upper chamber, and going across to Janet, who was leaning on the parapet looking at the river, he was on the point of presenting something to her, when his little speech was stopped by the appearance of Baker coming around the corner from the front of the house, with a parcel exactly like his own.

"Two!" cried Inness, bursting into a peal of laughter; and then we saw, as he tore off the paper, that he had the old brass lamp which Janet had admired. Meanwhile Baker had another, the Desired Inn having been evidently equal to the occasion, and to driving a good bargain. Our laughter aroused the Professor, who turned and gazed at our group from the step of the carriage. But having no idea of losing the credit of his unusual gallantry simply because some one else had had the same thought, he now extracted his own parcel and silently extended it.

"A third!" cried Inness. And then we all gave way again.

"I am so much obliged to you," said Janet, sweetly, when there was a pause, "but I am sorry you took the trouble. Because – because Mr. Verney has already kindly given me one, which is packed in one of the baskets."

At this we laughed again, more irresistibly than before – all, I mean, save Miss Elaine, who merely said, in the most unamused voice, "How very amusing!" As we had all admired the ancient lamp (although no one thought of offering it to us), the superfluous gifts easily found places among us, and were not the less thankfully received because obtained in that roundabout way.

We now left the "Sweet Waters" behind us, and went down the valley towards the sea.

"There is another town as picturesque as Dolce Acqua some miles farther up the valley," said Verney. "I have a sketch of it. It is called Pigna."

"Oh, let us go there!" said Janet.

"We cannot, my daughter, spend the entire remainder of our earthly existence among the Maritime Alps," said Mrs. Trescott.

Inness had the place beside Janet all the way home.

On the Cornice, a few miles from Mentone, we came upon a boy and girl sitting by the road-side; they had a flageolet and a sort of bagpipe, and wore the costume of Italian peasants, their foot-coverings being the complicated bands and strings which are, in American eyes (the strings transmuted into ribbons), indelibly associated with bandits. "They are pifferari," said Verney; and we stopped the carriages and asked them to play for us. The boy played on his flageolet, and the girl sang. As she stood beside us in the dust, her brown hands clasped before her, her great dark eyes never once stopped gazing at Janet, who, clad that day in a soft cream-white walking costume, with gloves, round hat, and plume of the same tint, looked not unlike a lily on its stem. The Italian girl was of nearly the same age in years, and of fully the same age in womanhood, and it seemed as if she could not remove her fascinated gaze from the fair white stranger. Inness and Verney both tried to attract her attention; but the boy gathered up the coins they dropped, and the girl gazed on. As the Professor was tired, and did not care for music, we drove onward; but, as far as we could see, the Italian girl still stood in the centre of the road, gazing after the carriages.

"What do you suppose is in her mind?" I said. "Envy?"

"Hardly," said Verney. "To her, probably, Miss Trescott is like a being from another world – a saint or Madonna."

"Ah, Mr. Verney, what exaggerated comparisons!" said Miss Elaine, in soft reproach. "Besides, it is irreligious, and you promised me you would not be irreligious."

Verney looked somewhat aghast at this revelation, of course overheard by Mrs. Clary and myself. It was rather hard upon him to have his misdeeds brought up in this way – the little sentimental speeches he had made to Miss Elaine in the remote past – i.e., before Janet arrived. But he was obliged to bear it.

"I suppose," said Inness, one morning, "that you are not all going away from Mentone without even seeing Mon – Monaco?"

"It can be seen from Turbia," answered the Professor, grimly. "And that view is near enough."

Inness made a grimace, and the subject was dropped. But it ended in our seeing Turbia from Monaco, and not Monaco from Turbia.

"There is no use in fighting against it," said Mrs. Clary, shrugging her shoulders. "You will have to go once. Every one does. There is a fate that drives you."

"And the joke is," said Baker, in high glee, "that the Professor is going too. It seems that the view from Turbia was not near enough for him, after all."

"I am not surprised," said Mrs. Clary. "I thought he would go: they all do. I have seen English deans, Swiss pastors, and American Presbyterian ministers looking on in the gambling-rooms, under the principle, I suppose, of knowing something of the evil they oppose. They do not go but once; but that once they are very apt to allow themselves."

The views along the Cornice west of Mentone are very beautiful. As we came in sight of Monaco, lying below in the blue sea, we caught its alleged resemblance to a vessel at anchor.

"Monaco, or Portus Herculis Monœci, was well known to the ancients," said the Professor. "Its name appears in Virgil, Tacitus, Pliny, Strabo, and other classical writers. Before the invention of gunpowder its situation made it impregnable. It was one of the places of refuge in the long struggle between the Guelphs and Ghibellines" (we were rather discouraged by the appearance of these names so early in the day), "and it is mentioned by an Italian historian as having become in the fourteenth century a 'home for criminals' and a 'gathering-place for pirates' – terms equally applicable at the present day." The Professor's voice was very sonorous.

Inness, the Professor, Janet, and myself were in a carriage together. As Mrs. Clary and Miss Graves did not accompany us that day, we had two carriages and a phaeton, the latter occupied by Lloyd and Verney.

"As to Monaco history," remarked Inness, carelessly, when the Professor ceased, "I happen to remember a few items. The Grimaldis came next to Hercules, and have had possession here since A.D. 980. Marshal Boucicault, who was extremely devout, and never missed hearing two masses a day, besieged the place and took it before Columbus and the other Boucicault discovered America. In the reign of Louis the Fourteenth a Prince of Monaco was sent as ambassador to Rome, and entered that city with horses shod in silver, the shoes held by one nail only, so that they might drop the sooner. Another Prince of Monaco went against the Turks with his galleys, and brought back to this shore the inestimable gift of the prickly-pear, for which we all bless his memory whenever we brush against its cheerful thorns. Three Princes of Monaco were murdered in their own palace, which of course was much more home-like than being murdered elsewhere. The Duke of York died there also: not murdered, I believe, although there is a ghost in the story. The principality is now three miles long, and the present prince retains authority under the jurisdiction of France. To preserve this authority he maintains a strictly disciplined standing army (they never sit down) of ten able-bodied men."

These sentences were rolled out by Inness with such rapidity that I was quite bewildered; as for the Professor, he was hopelessly stranded half-way down the list, and never came any farther.

Passing Monte Carlo, we drove over to the palace.

"Certainly there is no town on the Riviera so beautifully situated as Monaco," I said, as the road swept around the little port and ascended the opposite slope. "The high rock on which it stands, jutting out boldly into the sea, gives it all the isolation of an island, and yet protects by its peninsula this clear deep little harbor within."

The old town of Monaco proper is on the top of this rocky presqu'ile, three hundred feet above the sea, and west of Monte Carlo, the suburb of Condamine, and the chapel of St. Devote. Leaving the carriages, we entered the portal of the palace, conducted by a tenth of the standing army.

"My first living and roofed palace," said Janet, as we ascended the broad flight of marble steps leading to the "Court of Honor," which was glowing with recently renewed frescos. A solemn man in black received us, and conducted us with much dignity through thirteen broad, long rooms, with ceilings thirty feet high – a procession of stately apartments which left upon our minds a blurred general impression of gilded vases, crimson curtains, slippery floors, ormolu clocks, wreaths of painted roses, fat Cupids, and uninhabitableness. The only trace of home life in all the shining vista was a little picture of the present Prince, taken when he was a baby, a life-like, chubby little fellow, smiling unconcernedly out on all this cold splendor. It was amusing to see how we women gathered around this little face, with a sort of involuntary comfort.

In the Salle Grimaldi there was a vast chimney-piece of one block of marble covered with carved devices.

In the room where the Duke of York died there was a broad bed on a platform, curtained and canopied with heavy damask, and surrounded by a gilded railing. We stood looking at this structure in silence.

"It is very impressive," murmured Mrs. Trescott at last. Then, with a long reminiscent sigh, as if she had been present and chief mourner on the occasion, she added: "There is nothing more inscrutable than the feet of the flying hours: they are winged! – winged!"

"On the whole," said Janet, as we went down the marble steps towards the army – "on the whole, taking it as a palace, I am disappointed."

"What did you expect?" said Verney.

"Oh, all the age of chivalry," she answered, smiling.

"The so-called age of chivalry – " began the Professor; but he never finished; because, by some unexpected adjustment of places, he found himself in the phaeton with Baker, and that adventurous youth drove him over to Monte Carlo at such a speed that he could only close his eyes and hold on.

The Casino of Monte Carlo is now the most important part of the principality of Monaco; instead of being subordinate to the palace, the latter has become but an appendage to the modern splendor across the bay. Monte Carlo occupies a site as beautiful as any in the world. In front the blue sea laves its lovely garden; on the east the soft coast-line of Italy stretches away in the distance; on the west is the bold curving rock of Monaco, with its castle and port, and the great cliff of the Dog's Head. Behind rises the near mountain high above; and on its top, outlined against the sky, stands the old tower of Turbia in its lonely ruined majesty, looking towards Rome.

"That tower is nineteen hundred feet above the sea," said the Professor. "It was built by the Romans, on the boundary between Liguria and Gaul, to commemorate a victory gained by Augustus Cæsar over the Ligurians. It was called Tropæum Augusti, from which it has degenerated into Turbia. Fragments of the inscription it once bore have been found on stones built into the houses of the present village. The inscription itself is, fortunately, fully preserved in Pliny, as follows: 'To Cæsar, son of the divine Cæsar Augustus, Emperor for the fourteenth time, in the seventeenth year of his reign, the Senate and the Roman people have decreed this monument, in token that under his orders and auspices all the Alpine races have been subdued by Roman arms. Names of the vanquished:' and here follow the names of forty-five Alpine races."

At first we thought that the Professor was going to repeat them all; but although no doubt he knew them, he abstained.

"The village behind the tower – we cannot see it from here – seems to be principally built of fragments of the old Roman stone-work," said Lloyd. "I have been up there several times."

"Then we do not see the Trophy as it was?" I said.

"No; it is but a ruin, although it looks imposing from here. It was used as a fortress during the Middle Ages, and partially destroyed by the French at the beginning of the last century."

"It must have been majestic indeed, since, after all its dismemberment, it still remains so majestic now," said Margaret.

We were standing on the steps of the Casino during this conversation; I think we all rather made ourselves stand there, and talk about Turbia and the Middle Ages, because the evil and temptation we had come to see were so near us, and we knew that they were. We all had a sentence ready which we delivered impartially and carelessly; but none the less we knew that we were going in, and that nothing would induce us to remain without.

From a spacious, richly decorated entrance-hall, the gambling-rooms opened by noiseless swinging doors. Entering, we saw the tables surrounded by a close circle of seated players, with a second circle standing behind, playing over their shoulders, and sometimes even a third behind these. Although so many persons were present, it was very still, the only sounds being the chink, chink, of the gold and silver coins, and the dull, mechanical voices of the officials announcing the winning numbers. There were tables for both roulette and trente et quarante, the playing beginning each day at eleven in the morning and continuing without intermission until eleven at night. Everywhere was lavished the luxury of flowers, paintings, marbles, and the costliest decoration of all kinds; beyond, in a superb hall, the finest orchestra on the Continent was playing the divine music of Beethoven; outside, one of the loveliest gardens in the world offered itself to those who wished to stroll awhile. And all of this was given freely, without restriction and without price, upon a site and under a sky as beautiful as earth can produce. But one sober look at the faces of the steady players around those tables betrayed, under all this luxury and beauty, the real horror of the place; for men and women, young and old alike, had the gambler's strange fever in the expression of the eye, all the more intense because, in almost every case, so governed, so stonily repressed, so deadly cold! After a half-hour of observation, we left the rooms, and I was glad to breathe the outside air once more. The place had so struck to my heart, with its intensity, its richness, its stillness, and its terror, that I had not been able even to smile at the Professor's demeanor; he had signified his disapprobation (while looking at everything quite closely, however) by buttoning his coat up to the chin and keeping his hat on. I almost expected to see him open his umbrella.

"To me, they seemed all mad," I said, with a shudder, looking up at the calm mountains with a sense of relief.

"It is a species of madness," said Verney. Miss Elaine was with him; she had taken his arm while in the gambling-room; she said she felt "so timid." Margaret and Lloyd meanwhile had only looked on for a moment or two, and had then disappeared; we learned afterwards that they had gone to the concert-room, where music beautiful enough for paradise was filling the perfumed air.

"For those who care nothing for gambling, that music is one of the baits," said Lloyd. "When you really love music, it is very hard to keep away from it; and here, where there is no other music to compete with it, it is offered to you in its divinest perfection, at an agreeable distance from Nice and Mentone, along one of the most beautiful driveways in the world, with a Parisian hotel at its best to give you, besides, what other refreshment you need. Hundreds of persons come here sincerely 'only to hear the music.' But few go away without 'one look' at the gambling tables; and it is upon that 'one look' that the proprietors of the Casino, knowing human nature, quietly and securely rely."

The Professor, having seen it all, had no words to express his feeling, but walked across to call the carriages with the air of a man who shook off perdition from every finger. And yet I felt sure, from what I knew of him, that he had appreciated the attractions of the place less than any one of us – had not, in fact, been reached by them at all. Those who do not feel the allurements of a temptation are not tempted. Not a grain in the Professor's composition responded to the invitation of the siren Chance; they were not allurements to him; they were but the fantastic phantasmagoria of a dream. The lovely garden he appreciated only botanically; the view he could not see; abstemious by nature, he cared nothing for the choice rarities of the hotel; while the music, the heavenly music, was to him no more than the housewife's clatter of tin pans. Yet I might have explained this to him all the way home, he would never have comprehended it, but would have gone on thinking that it was simply, on his part, superior virtue and self-control.

But I had no opportunity to explain, since I was not in the carriage with him, but with Janet, Inness, and Baker. Margaret and Lloyd drove homewards together in the phaeton; and as they did not reach the hotel until dusk – long after our own arrival – I asked Margaret where they had been.

"We stopped at the cemetery to watch the sunset beside my statue, aunt."

"Why do you care so much for that marble figure?"

"I do not think she is quite marble," answered Margaret, smiling. "When I look at her, after a while she becomes, in a certain sense, responsive. To me she is like a dear friend."

Another week passed, and another. And now the blossoms of the fruit-trees – a cloud of pink and snowy white – were gone, and the winter loiterers on the sunny shore began to talk of home; or, if they were travellers who had but stopped awhile on the way to Italy, they knew now that the winds of the Apennines no longer chilled the beautiful streets of Florence, and that all the lilies were out.