We Two at Monte Carlo

Front matter

&? Jlljbestp Vc^ni-kni LONDON, CHAPMAN and HALL limited, CHARING CROSS TURKISH BATHS, NORTHUMBERLAND AVENUE, [J. & H. NEVILL. PRONOUNCED TO BE THE FINEST IN EUROPE. LIGHTED BY ELECTRICITY. ADMISSION: 7 a.m. to 7 p.m., 3s. 6d. ; Evening, 7 to 9, 2s. Chiropodist in attendance, and Hairdressing Room attached. Separate Batb for laoies. ©pen all H>ap. Also at LONDON BRIDGE and ALDGATE. Prospectus Post Free on application. ROWLANDS' ODONTO. A PURE, FRAGRANT, and NON-GRITTY TOOTH POWDER. Whitens the Teeth, Prevents Decay, Gives Delightful Fragrance to the Breath. Ask for ROWLANDS' ODONTO, of 20, HATTON GARDEN, LONDON, and avoid imitations. Sold by Chemists, &c. WE TWO Al MONTE CARLO IV ALBERT D. VANDAM LONDON— CHAPMAN and HALL, LIMITED. 189O. [All rights reserved] LONDON: PRINTED CY GILBERT AND K1VINGT0N, LIMITED, st. John's house, clerkenwell road. CONTENTS.

Chapter I

I make up my mind to go to Monte-Carlo— I find an unexpected travellingcompanion in Frank Spelfield. It was about the middle of February of last year that I made up my mind to go to Monte-Carlo. Six or seven weeks of uninterrupted practice of the British virtue of hospitality to sundry country friends, nieces and nephews, had physically, morally and mentally undermined my constitution. But it was the advice of an eminent London physician which virtually added the last straw to the already overburdened back. I give his diagnosis and the remedies suggested textually. " There is nothing much the matter with youj my dear sir," he said paternally. " I am afraid you have overworked yourself, taken your meals irre gularly and hurriedly, and above all not varied them enough. Though I am not an advocate of a too highly-seasoned cuisine, I think the opposite error is quite as bad.

I mean plain chops and B -1 steaks and boiled and roast. Above all you have been poring too much over your books, not gone out enough. Why not try the theatres, a few dinner-parties, a dance now and then. You seem to suffer from insomnia. What you want chiefly is a little excitement. That will put you all right/' Up till then I had always considered that clever tale about Deburau, the famous French harlequin going to consult the physician, and the latter tell ing him to go and see Deburau a myth. I now believe it to be Gospel truth. Here had I been not doing a stroke of work for weeks, except correct some proofs. Here had I been sitting through luncheons and dinners of two and three hours' duration, cramming myself with entrees and entremets, and longing for an unsophisticated chop or steak, and that man was telling me to avoid plain food.

I had pored over no books except over those containing the words of the pantomimes, which I almost knew by heart, and that man was telling me to go to the theatres. Here had I been falling asleep amidst the most gorgeous trans formation scenes and during the most harrowing episodes of the Adelphi melodrama. Here had I been having row upon row with my housekeeper for not waking me in the morning, and she reply ing that it wanted a foghorn and not a human voice to accomplish the task, and there was that man telling me that I was suffering from want of sleep. Ye gods, ye gods ! I felt like the applewoman must have felt when Daniel O'Connell called her a parallelogram. I rose in silence, in silence I put down my fee, in silence I left the inner sanctum of the great man's house. I felt inclined to ask the sable-clad butler who showed me out what undertaker he was touting for, but I didn't. I was afraid that his answer, if truthfully given, might compel me to indict him and his master for conspiracy against the lives of her Majesty's lieges.

There was, however, one sentence of the great man's little speech that clung persistently to my mind. He had said what I chiefly wanted was a little excitement. Of course he could have only meant pleasant excitement, for had he not men tioned the theatres and dances in the same breath ? He was not bound to know that the nightly suffer ings of Mr. Terriss and other stage heroes and heroines do not bring a tear to my eyes, that their ultimate happiness at the fall of the curtain leaves me perfectly apathetic. He was not bound to know that I had left off dancing a quarter of a century ago, when I was still very young. There are men who dance till they are old. I have seen them myself — mostly in the illustrations of the Christmas numbers, now and then at the Police Ball, and at the Licensed Victuallers'.

We are not told the exact age of David when he danced before the ark, but we are plainly given to understand that Michal, Saul's daughter, despised him. As I object to being despised by anything in petticoats — be it a daughter or a mother — I no longer dance. B It was very evident, then, that the excitement could not be got out of theatres and dances. There was the alternative of trying to fall in love with one of my numerous fair acquaintances, but it was a ticklish experiment at best. I had tried it before, to my own discomfiture and that of my lawyers, a most respectable firm, who hinted that they did not care to have their name connected in the papers with breach of promise cases and such like. Up to this day I am profoundly ignorant of what they meant by " such like." I was once on the point of inquiring, but was interrupted by the head of the firm telling one of the clerks to send the deed boxes of Lord Cantabile to Messrs. Simeon and Simeon.

Next day I read in the Society papers that a petition had been filed in the Divorce Court, in which Lord Cantabile was cited as the co-respondent. I am certain that his lord ship was as innocent of the charge as a newborn babe, but since then I have 'a salutary fear of being taxed with having caused a simple or com pound fracture of the seventh commandment. Still, I am reluctant to think that the " such like " of my legal advisers referred to a like possibility in my case. While pondering where the excitement was to come from, I had got as far as the Piccadilly end of Bond Street. When there I stopped and like the becalmed mariner scanned the horizon to discover the quarter whence the exciting breeze was to blow, because with the perverseness of human nature I was by this time fully agreed as to the urgent necessity of carrying out that part of the physician's programme.

At the same moment a parcel van of the London, Chatham and Dover Railway drew up at the kerbstone, and a large bil! setting forth the attractions of the Carnival at Nice caught my eye. I felt like Moses must have felt when he was shown a glimpse of the Promised Land, for to me the country flowing with milk and honey was not the old Italian town with its illuminations, piazzas, masqueraders, battles of flowers and confetti, balls and processions, but a sunny rock a few -miles beyond, yclept Monte-Carlo. Still, the idea had struck root there and then. I made a mental calculation of my available resources, and found that they amounted to seventy-five pounds, fifteen of which, in the shape of three 5/. notes, were in my breastpocket. How I regretted that guinea spent an hour ago. It meant five chances on the red or black at roulette, it meant at least twenty minutes of excitement, it meant 160 fr. if successful.

The reader may conclude from this that I am a desperate gambler, if so, the reader knows nothing of desperate gamblers who would stake their 25 fr. on one turn of the wheel. If I were a " drinkist" I should pray for the throat of a giraffe in order to make the sensation of " sinking the liquor " last the longer. Seventy-five pounds would land me with a clear sixty at Monte-Carlo, and my return ticket available for four weeks in my pocket. It would leave me thirty pounds to try my luck, which thirty pounds properly spread over the allotted time meant five chances a day, because one can live for a pound per diem even at the H6tel de Paris, if one knows how, and happens to be a journalist besides. The managers are always ready to make some conces sions to one of the fraternity, especially if he be English.

The foreigner who is willing to apply the axiom of " I'll tickle you and you'll tickle me," to the British scribe nearly always finds that he gets more tickling than he gives. The manager of the H6tel de Paris, which is situated in the grounds of the Casino itself, has only had cause once to regret his generosity in that respect. He entertained an angel unawares. In return for the tickling, the angel bared the flaming sword of denunciation of the gaming-tables and all that pertains thereto. The angel was the editor of a quasi-religious paper, subsidized by some pseudo society for the suppression of well-mannered, well bred, and well-dressed recreation. The angel pocketed the expenses allowed to him by his principals, and fell foul of everything. No wonder, the angel had been gambling all the while, and had finally made a pretty round sum, when the night previous to his departure he fell in with a fair-haired sister angel, hailing from the Quartier de l'Europe in Paris.

She robbed him of the whole, and he was afraid of having his name in the papers. He would rail against journalists, if he dared, but has simply to be content with quoting, or rather misquoting, Mephistopheles' remarks about Nature having created opportuni ties at the same time that she created lads and lasses, which he does unctuously and religiously. The bill of the Chatham and Dover, with its irresistible invitation still further enhanced by the rapid calculation just mentioned, had virtually settled the question. By the time I got to Sack ville Street my mind was fully made up to go to Monte-Carlo. I stood looking for a moment or so at the sporting prints in Messrs. Fore's windows, when I felt a hand gently laid on my shoulder. I turned round and found my chum, Frank Spelfield, standing by my side.

" Studying the bank on which to break your neck ? " asked Frank, smiling. " No ; simply studying the knack by which to break the bank," I replied, yielding to the fatal temptation of perpetrating an atrocious pun. I was sorry immediately afterwards, so sorry, in fact, as to feel bound to explain. But Frank had caught the meaning at once. " Hurrah ! going to Monte-Carlo," he exclaimed. " So am I. Let us go and take our tickets at once." I looked at Frank with blank amazement. This was Saturday morning. When I left him on the Tuesday night he had not broached a syllable of his intention to go to Monte-Carlo. What had happened since then ? "You CToing to Monte-Carlo, and all of a sudden?" I said. "You did not mention it on Tuesday night ? " " No more did you," he laughed ; but there seemed to me something constrained in his laughter.

" That's true," I answered. " But then, I have no one to consult, while you have Martha, and above all Lady Crimson. What does she think of it ? " " I'll tell you all about it on our journey ; let us go and take our tickets first," he said, hurrying me along, and before I knew where I was I found myself standing in Cook's office opposite St. James' Church. " For how long are we going ? " asked Frank. " For four weeks," I replied. " We had better go for six. I have made arrangements with Jarvis to do the work for six, and the boss is quite agreeable as long as I send some stuff from the Riviera." "But my money won't hold out so long," I objected, laughing. " Bother the money," said Frank. " I have got enough for both ; besides, we'll make some over there." But for the first part of the sentence, the last would have sounded ominous to me.

Surely Frank Spelfield had not been bitten by the mania of making a fortune at Monte-Carlo ? Whatever were my misgivings in that respect, they vanished at the sight of what was to me a still greater cause for astonishment — I will not say uneasiness. If I had been fairly amazed at Frank's suddenly announced resolution of accompanying me, I was absolutely staggered at the appearance of a brand new pocket-book and its contents, which he took out to pay for the tickets — he insisted that we should settle up afterwards. The Russian leather case was positively stuffed with crisp bank-notes. At a rough guess there must have been seven or eight hundred pounds' worth of them. I noticed that much when he tendered three 10I. ones in exchange for the tickets. Such a sum in the possession of Frank Spel field, who, apart from a moderate allowance from his father, a physician in good practice in one of the northern towns, had no resources but those of his pen, who furthermore was the most impro vident creature on earth, who, pecuniarily, was nearly always " on his beam ends," as he ex pressed it , who in fact had adopted a motto to that effect, " In the midst of life we are in debt ; " such a sum in his possession was not only a marvel, but, as I said before, a somewhat disquiet ing marvel.

Whether Frank noticed my perplexity or not I cannot say, but after the transaction at Cook's office had been concluded, he seemed very anxious to get away. " I have an appointment to lunch with Martha and Lady Crimson," he said ; " so I must rush. As it is I am a quarter of an hour late. We start to morrow at eleven, don't we ? Very well, I'll be at Victoria at ten minutes to the hour. Good-bye, old man." And he jumped into a hansom, while I stood in the middle of the pavement, puzzled, worrying my brain as to how he got hold of seven or eight hundred pounds. What was the mystery con nected with this sudden wealth — the crime, perhaps ?

Chapter II

I remain in the dark with regard to the mystery— The late Franijois Blanc of Homburg and Monte-Carlo. We only stopped two days in Paris, the guileless inhabitants of which hospitable city were rehearsing the effects of a new version of their hospitality as they intended to perform it at the forthcoming exhibition. As a matter of course the best pro perties to be used in the new play, including furniture and hangings at the hotels, had gone to be cleaned and done up ; the rehearsals were conducted with the shabbiest they could find, and we were relegated to bare rooms on the fourth floor. On the other hand, lest they should not be letter perfect in their dialogue when the curtain rose, shop-keepers, hotel-keepers, and restaurateurs alike — to say nothing of Jehu and his delectable fellow-extortioner, the cafe waiter, were repeating whole sentences of it, before there was any occasion — to our minds.

" Everything, monsieur, is already thrice as dear as it used to be, and we do not know what the consequences will be," they said constantly. " I know," said Frank, who speaks French very well, to a restaurateur whom he knew and who saluted him with the same lament. " For the present we'll not dine here, we'll come back this time next year, when prices are down. Au revotr until then." Frank had been in capital spirits ever since we started, but the promised explanation of his suddenly acquired wealth had not been forthcoming. That there was some mystery con nected with the money as well as with the impulsively undertaken journey I felt confident, the nature of it baffled my powers of divination. The money was there, and as usual, spent with a lavish hand. Whence had it come ? I was unable to guess.

Less difficult was it to fathom, unaided, the purpose of the journey. Though Frank was careful enough to conceal his hand, it was evident to me that he was cocksure of making a coup. This naturally led me to watch for a hint on his part of having a system, for I have before now seen men like Frank, who had scarcely touched a card in their lives, becoming victims to that kind of hallucination. But no such hint came, and still Frank seemed to me perfectly at ease with regard to the final upshot of his trip to Monte-Carlo. He betrayed as much not only by his conversation, but by his acts. He even talked of starting a weekly on his return to London, though I knew — in fact he confessed it — that the sum of money he had upon him was all he had in the world. Once more ; it was certain that he felt confident ol success.

Personally I felt neither confident nor the reverse. If on my return to town I had the necessary cab fare for conveying me and my belongings home, I would look upon the whole thing as a matter of course. Nor would it surprise me, if in addition to the sum taken with me I brought back a hundred or a hundred and fifty pounds. I had no system, merely a quiet way of putting small stakes on columns and dozens at random but at the same time, which had often proved profitable. For my acquaintance with the roulette tables and their late presiding genius, M. Francois Blanc, was of long standing. It dates from long before the Franco-German War. It was at Baden-Baden in the sixties that I saw M. Blanc for the first time, on the very day that Emperor (then King) William and Napoleon III. had their interview.

I was having a chat with a superannuated croupier, who had been appointed inspector of the gaming rooms, on the steps of the Kursaal. Martin was a kind, nice, courteous sexagenarian, always ready to give the journalist a bit of anecdotal gossip about the celebrated personages with whom in the course of his career he had come in contact, and whose private history he had at his fingers' ends. For the croupier does come in contact with them. In the excitement of the game, prince, peer and peasant disappear, the punter alone remains. I was standing on the steps of the Kursaal then previous to going to the Lichtenthal Allee, whither the crowd had gone to see the sovereigns pass ; there were few people inside. " Aren't you going to the Lichtenthal Allee, Monsieur Martin?" I asked. The old man shrugged his shoulders.

" The sight of King William is no novelty to us. He comes here pretty well every year." "True; but what about Emperor Napoleon ? " " The Emperor Napoleon," quoth Martin, pondering as it were. " I saw the first one when quite a lad. This one is the third son of Queen Hortense, the one who used to travel about a good deal. If I am not mistaken — " " You are not mistaken, Martin ;" came a voice from behind us. " He still owes twenty-five louis to the bank." I looked round and saw a thin, wizened, shrivelled old man, below rather than above the middle height. Though it was very warm he wore a long overcoat reaching to his heels and hanging on his angular limbs as it would have hung on a clothes-prop. I am positive that he would not have turned the scales at 9 st., yet he seemed to move ponderously ; but it was neither ill-health nor weight that impeded his locomotion, as I found out afterwards, I have never had the sensation of meeting with a live snake in a wood, but from what I have read, I should imagine that its slow movement towards one, the sudden rear ing of the head when close to its intended victim, and the putting forth of its fangs, were something like M. Blanc's manner of approach.

M. Blanc's fangs consisted of a pair of gold-rimmed spectacles, which by the mere play of the facial muscles he moved up and down his nose, lowering them as far as the tip and then arresting their further descent like a Japanese acrobat gliding down a pole. Then there would be disclosed a pair of deep-set grey eyes that could assume an infinite variety of expression, ranging from the most benign kindness to the hardest callousness, but at all times piercing the very soul of his interlocutor. When Francois Blanc lowered his spectacles, it was tantamount to the knight of old lowering his vizor, he was ready for battle. The rest of the face was remarkable enough in all conscience, firmly set lips, the upper one furnished with a few scanty, bristly grey hairs, chevaux de frise as it were to a cynical mouth, a not unshapely nose, with nostrils ever on the quiver, sniffing moral and mental corruption from afar.

Still with all this, a generous man at times. I have only seen one face like it in my life, that of Count von Moltke. The likeness may be a purely imaginary one on my part, but the intense and concentrated power of the features was the same. "You are not mistaken, Martin," he chuckled once more. " He still owes twenty-five louis to the bank ; " and then he slowly walked away, leaning heavily on his gold-knobbed walking-stick. I had no need to ask his name. I instinctively knew this to be Francois Blanc. No man has been more systematically abused than Francois Blanc. Of no man did and does, the world — the glib leader-write/ included — know so little. The exploits of a Napoleon I., a Bismarck, and a Cavour, the motives that impelled them, have been recorded in " Memoirs " and " Histories :'' people were fairly asked to judge from facts put before them.

The exploits of Francois Blanc have never had their historian ; to the world at large he was nothing more than a successful speculator on the vices of others. Well, at the risk of being contradicted I beg to maintain that Blanc was more, a great deal more than that. In his own line he displayed as much genius as any of the three men just named, if by genius we mean a capacity for reading the human heart, the faculty of foreseeing events, and to apply the knowledge to his own profit by catering for the amusement of the better classes. He has benefited a certain section of the world's " society " a great deal more than did either Napoleon, Bismarck, or Cavour, and his benefits have left a far less bitter taste, a far less rankling hatred among the nations. I have not been deputed to white wash the memory of the king of roulette and trente et-quarante — if whitewashing be necessary — but in making Monte-Carlo what it is, he has done eminent service to Europe on the whole.

Gambling may be a vice, but it is far less disastrous when indulged in under the conditions offered by the late M. Blanc's system than under those thrust upon people by the advertisements of public com panies, shady stock-brokers, and shadier book makers in the daily papers. The roulette tables at Monte-Carlo have not bred embezzling clerks, pilfering shopmen, fraudulent trustees, absconding cashiers, and the like. Lord Brougham's discovery of the Riviera would at best have but provided a health-resort to a comparatively small number of valetudinarians ; the latter, no more than the devil, are entitled to a monopoly of all the good tunes. Yet, until the Spelugues Hill became Monte-Carlo, they, the valetudinarians kept away all those who delighted not in the diurnal con sumption of bronchial troches, whose conversation aimed at something more catholic than the discussion of the respective merits of chest protec tors and respirators, they made a fellow ashamed of being sound in limb and lung.

They have been relegated to Cannes, Mentone, Roquebrune ; even Nice knows them no more. The few asthmatical, gouty, and consumptive loungers to be met with on the Promenade des Anglais in the latter town are there for a little show, the Nice municipality is suspected of keeping them as a kind of exculpatory puff; nay, it is even whispered that there is nothing the matter with them, that they are merely super annuated actors who utilize their talents that way. To return for a moment to M. Blanc and to the C history of his roulette tables. In 1863 trente-et-quarante and roulette seemed a great deal more firmly established at Homburg and Baden-Baden than they appear at Monaco now ; the concession transferred from Benazet to Blanc had another ten years to run. To the ordinary observer there was not the slightest indication that at the end of the decade Prussia would be too great a power to accept the profits accruing from the gaming-tables ; the Schleswig-Holstein War had not been fought, the humiliation of Austria, let alone the crushing defeat of France, had no consistency in any one's brain, except, perhaps, in that of Bismarck and oi Von Moltke.

We may be pretty well certain that neither of these, nor Cavour, had made Francois Blanc the confidant of their schemes for the unification and aggrandizement of their countries, yet Francois foresaw not only the possibility but the probability ofboth. Proof whereof the following : — The Monaco concession dates from 1856. It was, however, not granted to Francois Blanc, but to Langlois and Aubert. Florestan I., Prince of Monaco, and the immediate predecessor of the delectable Charles III . who died last year, and whose virtues had better be left undiscussed, would have preferred dealing with a man of substance like Blanc to dealing with men of straw like Langlois and Aubert, who at the time were little more than that. But Blanc kept coy, he would not hear of it. Nor did he attempt to make an offer in the early part of '60, when Monte- Carlo. 19 Langlois and Aubert negotiated with Lefebvre, who became their successor.

The Bismarck that was to be had scarcely dawned upon the poli tical horizon, and Blanc felt perfectly secure where he was. Different was it in '63, not with regard to the outer world, but with regard to Blanc. He had had a peep at the monster, probably at Frankfort, and he took the measure of his potentiality at once. It will be remembered that Prince (then Count) von Bismarck was recalled from Paris in the end of July, 1862, to take the direction of affairs in Berlin. Before a twelvemonth had elapsed Blanc bought out Lefebvre. Before any statesman in Europe he foresaw what was coming. I once saw Count Beust in Paris, and he positively told me that Francois Blanc in the beginning of '63 said to him, " L'Empire allemand est une chose accomplie d'aiijcurd'hui, je n'ai qua me caser ailleurs " (The German Empire is as good as an accomplished fact to-day, the best thing I can do is to find a shop elsewhere).

The reader must bear with me a little longer, for I wish to give him an idea of the man to whom he owes such enjoyment as he happens to derive from a stay at Monte-Carlo. The world has been pestered with biographies of all kinds, why not a short sketch of Francois Blanc ? Should the reader be bored he can easily skip the chapter. In 1871 the concession originally granted to Langlois and Aubert by Charles III. had still fifteen years to run, and the present occupant of C the throne of Monaco had not announced his intention of suppressing the gaming-tables in his State the moment he had the chance. If he had, Francois Blanc would have probably laughed at him, for he knew petty rulers in general, and the Grimaldis in particular, too well not to know that they do not quarrel with their bread and butter, especially if the dispensers of the latter are not mere ignorant, down-trodden subjects.

Still, in 1 87 1 Blanc already foresaw what in all probability will happen before we are many years older, namely, a war between Italy and France, when the principality of Monaco will be annexed to the territories of the victor and the gaming-tables swept away. Between the surrender of Paris (28th Jan., 1871), and the outbreak of the Commune (18th March) I happened to be first at Cologne, afterwards in Homburg. A description of the encampment of the French prisoners of war outside the former city does not come within the scope of this little book. With the Mark Tapleyian capacity of their nation for making the best of things, they had, among other amusements, established a roulette-table with the maximum of fifty centimes on even chances. At the Hotel du Nord, where I was staying, I met Count Barsowsky, whom I had known in Paris, where we had become very friendly.

Barsowsky was and is very rich, but a gambler to the back bone. He was a frequent visitor to the camp, and it was amusing to see the man to whom a thousand pounds was a flea-bite, gamble for coppers with just as much zest as if the stakes had been pounds. Not for long, however, his craving got more voracious, and he flitted to Homburg, whither I accompanied him. The most brilliant season on the Riviera of the present day is flat and dull compared to that winter season in Homburg. People seemed to vie with one another in proving the truth of the Rochefoucauldian maxim about bearing the mis fortunes of others with resignation and cheerfulness. The hotels were crowded mostly with " patriotic " Frenchmen, who would have shed their blood for their country but for the fact of her being governed at the time by " the grocer's son from Cahors."