Part 13

Honorius the First, who succeeded to the prince just named, found the protectorate an insufferable burden and resented the presence of a Spanish garrison within the walls of Monaco. He endured the insolence, the exactions and the oppression of the foreigners for about forty years when it came upon him that he could tolerate the sight of them no longer. The Spaniards were lounging in his courtyard and his barrack square and strutting about his battlements to protect him from the supposed insidious enemy, France. He did not wish to be protected from France. He desired protection from the swaggering upstarts from Spain who patronised him, patted him metaphorically on the back and told him that he need not be afraid for they would look after him. Honorius preferred the possible hostility of France to the ever-present and offensive guardianship of the Spaniards.

He was tired of being looked after; so one day he got into touch with his enemy, the French, and had a genial, open-hearted talk with the general. The general frankly confessed that this Spanish garrison on the frontier was a menace and a hateful thing that grew, year by year, more disgustful. No doubt in the course of the interview they “said things” about these poltroons, these blusterers, these sneering braggarts and vied with one another merrily in the invention of crushing and ingenious terms of abuse. As a result of a pleasant chat they entered into a secret compact, the conditions of which were simple. Honorius was prepared to place Monaco under the French flag if only the French would rid him of this abominable old man of the sea, the Spaniard.

The day was near at hand when the Spanish garrison would be removed to Nice in order to be relieved by a fresh contingent. A very few of the obnoxious foreigners would then be left in Monaco. This was the day, therefore, arranged for the happy release. It was a certain day in November 1641.

Before the time arrived Honorius introduced into Monaco some hundred trusty men from Mentone. They came to the rock under all sorts of pretexts. Some were to visit friends who did not exist; others were coming to repair fortifications that needed no amendment, and a strangely large body were called upon to help in the palace kitchen which was already overstaffed. Anyhow they came; and, at the same time, it was arranged that two hundred armed Mentonais were to find hiding-places outside the walls, on the cliff side or in the huts about the Condamine and the harbours; while a few, no doubt, would seek shelter among the olive groves where Monte Carlo and its casino now stand.

The main body of the Spanish garrison marched off to Nice, singing and shouting, for they were on the way to their homes in Spain. The disposal of the few who remained was left to the ingenuity of a priest, a man of resource, one Pacchiero by name. He organised a special night service in the church “to pray for the defeat of the French should they attack Monaco.” The Spaniards could do no less than join in this pious exercise. The little church was soon filled with men, kneeling row upon row and pouring forth petitions for the destruction of the ill-intentioned French.

At 11 P.M. while the service was in progress, the glare of a bonfire, on the point of the rock, shot suddenly over the sea. It was a good bonfire for the light of its flames could be seen from Cap d’Ail to Cap Martin. It was a signal to the French that “The Day” had come and not only the day but the hour. The French captain, the Comte d’Alais, with a fine body of men under his command was looking out eagerly for this flash of fire and the moment he saw it he set off with his company to Monaco.

At the same time the Monégasques and the five-score absent-minded visitors from Mentone fell upon the Spaniards, threw open the gate and admitted the two hundred who had been shivering outside in the cold. After a sharp fight the scanty garrison was overcome and were lodged in a dungeon where they could continue their prayers for the ruin of the French at greater leisure.

Next morning the French troops marched into Monaco with banners flying and bands playing. They were welcomed by the people with songs and cheers and noisy enthusiasm. The houses were hung with garlands of flowers and all the women were decked out in their best. The cheering must have penetrated to the dungeons and have been very bitter to the Spaniards who had spent so much time in praying for the overthrow of these very men whose swinging tramp they could hear overhead.

The prince behaved with much graciousness and generosity. He caused the French troops and the Spaniards to be paraded in the square and, when the crowd had been hushed to silence, he delivered an appropriate and, no doubt, impressive address. At its conclusion he took from his neck the order of the Golden Fleece and handed it to the Spanish captain with the request that he would return it to His Majesty of Spain with the late wearer’s compliments and thanks. He then, amid uproarious cheering, donned the white scarf which betokened his allegiance to the King of France. The Spaniards he treated with a fine liberality, inspired by the grateful knowledge that he would never see them again. He allowed the officers to retain their swords. He gave to all the soldiers double pay and a generous supply of food for their journey. Furthermore he presented to the captain a letter in which—with some excess of fancy—he dwelt upon the bravery which both officers and men had shown under the recent disturbing conditions.

Thus it was that the Spaniards left Monaco and that the people of the rock saw the last of them. As they marched down the cliff to the high road they were not only content but even disposed to be thankful. Some, no doubt, were a little sad because they were leaving their sweethearts behind in Monaco; while all—without question—were burning to wring the neck of the priest who had organised that special night service at which they had prayed for the undoing of their now jubilant enemies.

Louis XIII of France was much pleased with the part the Prince of Monaco had played in ridding him of a Spanish outpost so near to his own territories. “He arranged by the treaty of Péronne for the independence of Monaco and the protection of a French garrison, together with sufficient lands in France to compensate for the loss of any Italian revenues confiscated by Spain. Grimaldi was rewarded by lands in France which were called his Duchy of Valentinois.”[39]

It was in this manner that the princes of Monaco became possessed of the title of Dukes of Valentinois.

[39] “Old Provence,” by T. A. Cook, Vol. ii., p. 158, 1914.

XXIV A MATTER OF ETIQUETTE

AMONG the minor happenings in the ways of the world a disproportionate interest always attaches to the breaking off of a marriage engagement. The event excites surprise and florid speculation, together with a tender and unreasoning sense of regret. It is, to the unknowing, as the sudden slamming of a door that seemed to open into paradise. The rupture may be due to many things, to ill-health or ill-temper, to discoveries, to a change of heart, to mean matters affecting money or to the lure of a brighter flame. It must be rare that the happiness of a devoted couple, on the very eve of their wedding, is dangerously threatened by a mere matter of etiquette; yet this happened at Monaco—or more precisely in Monaco harbour—about the year 1751.

The reigning prince, Honorius III, became enamoured of the beautiful Maria Caterina Brignole. This lady had not only a pretty face, but also a great charm of character and of mind. The two became engaged. The intricate arrangements that attend a princely espousal were completed and the date of the wedding was agreed upon.

The day at last came when the bride would arrive at Monaco. It was a day of feverish excitement. Every flag that the principality could produce was fluttering in the breeze; the country around was stripped of its flowers to deck the town; while every wardrobe was ransacked to furnish the very gayest head-dress, tunic and gown that the owner could boast of. All the inhabitants of Monaco—men, women and children—poured down to the harbour, leaving the streets deserted and the houses empty of all but the crippled or the sick. The quay was crammed; the beach was lined to the water’s edge, while even on the crest of La Turbie was a cluster of folk, who, if they could not come down to Monaco, were at least determined to see what little they could.

By the harbour-side was the prince in his most princely dress, surrounded by the gentlemen of the Court, bedecked with every medal, ribbon and star that they possessed. Behind the Court officials was the bodyguard, ranged in a line and as stiff as a row of gaudily painted tin soldiers. On one side of the princely party were the musicians and on the other that bevy of maidens dressed in white which should always attend the coming of a bride.

The long expected ship swept into the harbour; came alongside the quay in breathless silence and was made fast to the landing place. The bodyguard stiffened to even more metallic rigidity; the crowd stood with open mouths ready to cheer, while the musicians placed the trumpets to their lips prepared to burst forth with the National Hymn they had practised upon for so many weeks.

Nothing appropriate to the occasion happened. The silence remained unbroken. The prince had sent an ambassador to conduct the bride to the shores of Monaco. This over-dressed and over-heated official tumbled ashore in some disorder and hurried to the presence of the motionless prince. He had evidently something to say and indeed something startling to say; for his speech led to a conversation that became more and more excited until it rose to a veritable babel of voices. He hurried back to the ship and there became involved in an equally flurried conversation in which the Marchesa di Brignole, the mother of the bride, took a prominent and decided part. He returned to the quay and set ablaze another heated conflagration of words. Before it was quenched he leapt back to the vessel and there induced, among the expectant company, a second outburst of excited speech, attended by much gesticulation. Whatever he was doing he was at least a man who encouraged conversation.

Still nothing effective took place. The prince had not moved; the bride had not appeared; the band was still silent; the bodyguard still stiff and the crowd still agape. Something evidently had gone wrong and indeed very wrong.

The position—as the multitude came ultimately to learn—was this. The question had arisen as to which of the august two, the bride or the bridegroom, should make the first step towards a meeting. In the case of ordinary human beings the man would, no doubt, have at once rushed to the ship to embrace the lady; while the lady would have hurried to the quay side to find herself in the arms of her lover. Possibly as a result the two might have fallen into the water, but, at least, the meeting would have had a proper emotional interest.

Now when princes and the brides of princes are concerned things are quite different. They cannot tumble about like common folk. The prince was advised that he must not advance to the ship, because such a step would be unbecoming and indeed humiliating. He was the Prince of Monaco with his feet upon his own territory and whoever came must advance to him and not he to them. It was unthinkable that he should welcome a visitor to his domain by jumping over the sides of ships. If he moved, his honour, his dignity, his princely position would be at stake.

On the other hand the mother of the lady, a little red in the face, insisted that it was the duty of the bridegroom to meet the bride. It was against decorum for the bride to spring ashore as if she were a long lost child. To show anxiety to meet her future husband was unmaidenly, indelicate and indeed almost indecent.

The prince—as advised—could not give in and the marchesa, with head erect and folded arms and a disposition to stamp on the deck, declined to modify her views as a mother and a woman. So determined was this virtuous peeress upon the point that sooner than let her innocent daughter take one immodest step towards the shore she would break off the engagement and regard the wedding contract as annulled. Indeed in her indignation she went further. She ordered the captain of the ship to cast off and set sail for the port whence she had come.

Now was the opportunity for the mediator, for the common-sense man with no nonsense about him, for the person with a fertile brain. Some genius among the disputing parties suggested a compromise and a plank. The scheme was as follows. A broad plank was to be brought and sloped between the vessel and the quay. The prince was to take a certain number of steps along the plank towards the ship and, at the same moment, the bride would take precisely the same number of steps towards the shore. By this means the two would meet, face to face, exactly in the centre of the plank; the bridegroom would then turn on his heels and he and the lady would proceed to the shore side by side.

This ingenious manœuvre was agreed upon. Its execution was watched with gasping interest, for the happiness of two fond hearts depended upon its correct execution. If the prince took one more step than the lady he would be humiliated for ever; whereas if the bride ventured an extra pace she could never hide her blushes while she lived. The crowd was thrilled; the courtiers trembling and the two chief performers as nervous as if they had to walk on a tight-rope.

It ended well. The man and the maid met in the exact centre of the plank and, keeping step, marched to the shore with the precision of two German soldiers on parade. So admirable was the performance that the heavy military boot of the prince and the little satin shoe of the lady touched the soil of Monaco at the same moment.

The crowd shrieked till they were hoarse; the courtiers bowed to the earth; the guard became so stiff that they nearly fell backwards, while the band let loose that National Hymn which had been pent up so long.

And so—as the story books say—they married and lived happily ever after.

It only remains to add one other particular. In the fullness of time the prince died and the princess married again. She married Louis Joseph, Prince of Condé. He had been devoted to her for thirty years and, in spite of her age, still regarded her as the most beautiful creature in the world.

They were married in London and under circumstances which rendered the use of a plank unnecessary.

XXV THE MONTE CARLO OF THE NOVELIST

MONTE CARLO, they told me, was a place of great wickedness, where every path—though lined with flowers—led headlong to the Pit. From the many romances which deal with Monte Carlo I gathered that it was the seat of an intensive culture in iniquity, that it specialised in subtle forms of evil doing and that in its pleasances vice blossomed as the rose. Among what writers always term “the motley crowd” in this fictitious borough were men of quite exceptional depravity, women more accomplished than Delilah and crafty foreigners of the yellow-skinned and black-haired variety who are far too foreign to be real. Suicide, I understood, prevailed as an endemic disease.

I arrived at the principality on Christmas Eve and, owing to some train derangement, at an hour a little short of midnight. I approached this place—which those who are careless of terms describe as “a Hell”—with anxious interest. When the train came to a standstill I found myself in a quiet, ill-lit station, precisely like fifty other stations on the line. I resented this. I resented even the fact that the magic name “Monte Carlo” was portrayed in quite homely and decorous letters. I expected to see a number of peculiarly evil men alight from the train; but they were not in evidence. They probably “slipped away in the gloom,” as they do in the books. The only passengers I noticed were a very weary old lady and her maid. The lady was respectable almost to extinction and was absorbed by concern for her many hand bags and her obtuse dog.

I had been led to think that at midnight the grosser revels of Monte Carlo would be at their height; so in the drive to the hotel I expected to be shocked and grieved. I found myself, on the contrary, passing through pleasant streets as silent as those that encircle a cathedral close. The streets, moreover, were practically empty and for the morality and integrity of the few who passed by I was prepared to vouch even in the dark.

I thought I might see through some open window a room glaring with light and reeking with the ill odours, the ribald sounds and the drunken antics of a supper table. Possibly, through another window, I should behold wild-haired men and shamelessly dressed women bending over a green cloth speckled with cards. I saw only sleeping villas and drowsy gardens that breathed nothing but content and peace. With the romances working in my mind it would have been hardly a matter of surprise had I come upon a man in dress clothes, lying on his back in the pathway, with a wet crimson patch spreading over the front of his white shirt. Happily I saw no such thing. Monte Carlo, so far, had failed; failed in that it was not the place I had been led to expect by the writers of fiction.

Next morning, before the sun rose, I stepped out of my bedroom window on to the balcony to take a first look at the amazing city. It was now Christmas Day and still very dark. From the height at which I stood I appeared to be looking into a limitless vault with above a dome of the deepest blue, dotted with stars, and below a floor flooded by a sea whose surface was as ruffled metal.

The only light came from a gap in the east, at the uttermost limit of the vast water. It was a rare and tender light that seemed to be reflected up from the depths. A level band of orange stretched along the sea and over it was a wash of cowslip yellow that, fading into the half-suggested green of an opening leaf, was lost higher still in a flood of blue. Against this ineffable glow stood up, in a black, hard silhouette, the tops of houses.

It was evident that on the slope below me was a town and, at the foot of the town, a harbour. The town was a mere dark mass, so confused that it might have been a jumble of black rocks, save that, here and there, were tiny lights—lights evidently in upper windows. From one hidden casement near by, that must have been open and uncurtained, a gleam fell upon the side of a villa revealing every detail of shutter and balcony as well as a strip of bright ornament painted on the wall. The harbour was made manifest by two black piers with a light at the end of each—one green, one red—by a sheen, like that of quicksilver, on the water in the basin and by a row of lamps upon the three sides of the quay.

Beyond the harbour was a towering dull mass that I knew to be Monaco. It was picked out by a few dots of light which came, no doubt, from scattered rooms and by vague towers scarcely visible before the sullen curtain of the sky.

To the east there stood out, very cleanly cut against the delicate light of the coming day, certain black pinnacles and domes. They looked like the peaks of some fantastic oriental temple but I recognised them as belonging to the Casino and the great hotel.

Clear in the heaven, above these pinnacles and domes, blazed one large, brilliant star. It was, I imagine, the very Star in the East that two thousand years ago shone over the stable at Bethlehem.

XXVI MONTE CARLO

MONTE CARLO[40] lies on the very edge of the sea at the foot of a broken range of grey hills as if it were a patch of flowers at the foot of an ancient wall. As a town it takes the form of a sloping pile of houses and terraces which, when the sun falls on them, are a brilliant maize-yellow with splashes of white, of russet-red for the roofs and of green for the palms and the gardens. Viewed at sundown, from a long way off, it would seem as if the foot of the cliff, where it touches the sea, had been gilded with dull gold.

Compared with the old towns around it Monte Carlo is so new, so fresh, so bright that it may be the city of youth, an embodiment of youth itself, of careless, reckless, sensuous youth. It is so young that there is not a wrinkle on its face, although the cheek may be a trifle tinted and the lips unduly red. Its streets recall the gaiety of youth, its lavish gardens proclaim the indulgence and the luxury of youth, its crags and ravines the spirit of adventure, its clear sky the far vision of youth and its blazing sun the fierce passion of youth.

The gorgeous white Casino would seem to realise, in such a city, the fantasy of youth. It is so immense, so impossible, so unlike any conception of sober middle age, so unreal, so daring. It conforms to the type of no ordinary building. Its architecture is not of this world of common things, although it may possibly approach that of the exuberant temple in white on the top of a wedding cake.

The Casino, in its extravagance, is indeed just such a castle in the air as a young man would build, a fabric of his dream, his palace of delight. The very town tingles with life, with excitement, with restlessness, with the playfulness of everything. It is a butterfly town, for it lives only for a few gay months. The air is laden with the scent of flowers, while the honeymoon wind lies asleep on the heaving bosom of the deep.

Moreover it is a town of the south, of the warm, indolent south, where, as Sancho Panza would say, there is—whatever happens—“still sun on the wall.” Here in the south, as compared with the north, the seasons are reversed. The winter is the time for pleasure; the summer for rest, for seclusion within shut doors and, it may be, for forgetfulness of things.

The winter in the north is symbolic of the closing days of life and of the weariness of old age; for the world has then become cold, dark and cheerless, as well as indifferent and possibly unkind. The summer in the south is, in its turn, the symbol of the end of the pageant of youth. The gardens are faded and parched up, the flowers are withered and dead, the grass is a waste of arid brown, the fountains are dry and the very earth is cracked with thirst. The world, spent and panting, has sunk into a drugged sleep like a man exhausted by a fever. The days of riotous living have come to an end; passion has burnt itself out; the rivers of pleasure are now beds of stone and the Dead Sea apple is the only fruit left on the tree.

As the southern winter begins again the freshly-sown grass springs up; the lawns become green; the buds open; the roses, the heliotrope, the geraniums and the mimosa break into flower and the world is as gay as the sun and a caressing wind can make it.

It is then a tempting time to think of the drab, mist-shrouded island of England with its sodden fields and the rain dripping from the thatch, of London, of those sad houses and those awful streets, of the slush-covered roads, of the muffled faces and the blue hands, of the hours of semi-darkness, of the sun that is seen as a red disc in a fog.