have motored away from it, for in the
centre of the charming square before the Casino there was an automobile
of some newest type being raffled for in the interest of that chiefest
of the Christian virtues which makes its most successful appeals in the
vicinity of games of chance. Some one must have won the machine and
carried a party of his friends away, and triumphantly turned turtle with
it over the first of the precipices which abound at Monte Carlo. More
than the tables within this opportunity of fortune tempted me, and it
was only by the repeated recurrence to my principles that I was able to
get away alive. In spite of myself, I did not get away without, however
guiltlessly, having yielded to the spirit of the place. It was at the
Administrational Art Exhibition, where there were really some good
pictures, and where, on my entering, I was given a small brass disk. On
going out I attempted to restore this to the door-keeper, but he went
back with me to a certain piece of mechanism, where he instructed me to
put the disk into a slot. Then the disk ran its course, and a small
brass ball came out at the bottom. The door-keeper opened this, and
showed me that it was empty; but he gave me to understand that it might
have been full of diamonds, or rubies, or seed-pearls, which might have
implanted in me a lust of gambling I should never have overcome. Monte
Carlo was in every way tempting. A vast oblong, brilliant with flowers
in artistic patterns, stretched upward from the Casino, and there was an
agreeable park where one might sit. On every other side there were
costly hotels and costly restaurants, including that of the unexampled,
the insurpassable Giro, where one saw people eating and drinking at the
windows whenever one passed, by day or night. Beyond the Casino seaward
were the beautiful terraces, planted with palms and other tropic
growths, where people might come out and kill themselves when they had
nothing left to lose but their lives; and against the dark green of
their fronds the temple of fortune lifted a frosted-cake-like front of
long extent. I do not know just what type of architecture it is of, but
it distinctly suggests the art of the pastry cook when he has triumphed
in some edifice crowning the centre of the table at a great public
dinner. What mars the pleasing effect most is a detail which enforces
this suggestion, for the region of the Casino is thickly frequented by a
species of black doves, and