f the real dish, such as the fishermen cook for
themselves, and not the stew toned down to suit civilised palates.

Monte Carlo

The first time that I stayed for a week or so in the principality, I
lodged at the Hotel du Monte Carlo, on the hill below the Post Office.
It was a dingy hotel then, not having been redecorated and brightened up
as it has been now; but it had the supreme attraction to a lieutenant in
a marching regiment of being cheap. When the first day at dinner I cast
my eye down the wine-list, I found amongst the clarets wines of the
great vintage years at extraordinarily low prices, and in surprise I
asked the reason. The manager explained to me that the hotel was in the
early days used as a casino, and that the wines formed part of the
cellar of the proprietor--whether Mons. Blanc, or another, I do not
remember. Most of them were too old to bear removal to Paris, and they
were put down on the wine-list at ridiculously low prices in order to
get rid of them, for, as the manager said, "In Monte Carlo the winners
drink nothing but champagne, the losers water or whisky and soda." So
it is. In Monte Carlo, when a man has won, he wants the very best of
everything, and does not mind what he pays for it; when he has lost he
has no appetite, and grudges the money he pays for a chop in the
grill-room of the Cafe de Paris. The prices at the restaurants are
nicely adapted to the purses of the winners; and there is no place in
the world where it is more necessary to order with discrimination and to
ask questions as to prices. At Monte Carlo it is the custom to entirely
disassociate your lodging from your feeding, and you may stay at one
hotel and habitually feed at the restaurant of another without the
proprietor of the first being at all unhappy. Ciro's in the arcade is a
restaurant only, and is very smart and not at all cheap. A story is told
that an Englishman, new to Monte Carlo and its ways, asked the liveried
porter outside Ciro's whether it was a cheap restaurant. "Not exactly
cheap," said the Machiavelian servitor, "but really very cheap for what
you get here." On a fine day grand duchesses and the _haute cocotterie_
beseech Ciro to reserve tables for them on the balcony looking out on
the sea, and unless you are a person of great importance or notoriety,
or of infinite push, you will find yourself relegated to a place inside
the restaurant. At dinner there is not so much competition. Ciro himself
is a li