_"Ah me, how quick the days are flitting!
I mind me of a time that"s gone, When here I"d sit, as now I"m sitting In this same place--but not alone-- A fair young form was nestled near me, A dear, dear face looked fondly up, And sweetly spoke and smiled to hear me, There"s no one now to share my cup."_
The writer of these lines a cynic! Nonsense. When will the world learn to discriminate?
V
It is impossible to speak of Paris without giving a foremost place in the memorial retrospect to the Bois de Boulogne, the Parisian"s Coney Island. I recall that I pa.s.sed the final Sunday of my last Parisian sojourn just before the outbreak of the World War with a beloved family party in the joyous old Common. There is none like it in the world, uniting the urban to the rural with such surpa.s.sing grace as perpetually to convey a double sensation of pleasure; primal in its simplicity, superb in its setting; in the variety and brilliancy of the life which, upon sunny afternoons, takes possession of it and makes it a cross between a parade and a paradise.
There was a time when, rather far away for foot travel, the Bois might be considered a driving park for the rich. It fairly blazed with the ostentatious splendor of the Second Empire; the shoddy Duke with his shady retinue, in gilded coach-and-four; the world-famous courtesan, bedizened with costly jewels and quite as well known as the Empress; the favorites of the Tuileries, the Comedie Francaise, the Opera, the Jardin Mabille, forming an unceasing and dazzling line of many-sided frivolity from the Port de Ville to the Port St. Cloud, circling round La Bagatelle and ranging about the Cafe Cascade, a human tiara of diamonds, a moving bouquet of laces and rubies, of silks and satins and emeralds and sapphires. Those were the days when the Due de Morny, half if not full brother of the Emperor, ruled as king of the Bourse, and Cora Pearl, a clever and not at all good-looking Irish girl gone wrong, reigned as Queen of the Demimonde.
All this went by the board years ago. Everywhere, more or less, electricity has obliterated distinctions of rank and wealth. It has circ.u.mvented lovers and annihilated romance. The Republic ousted the bogus n.o.bility. The subways and the tram cars connect the Bois de Boulogne and the Bois de Vincennes so closely that the poorest may make himself at home in either or both.
The automobile, too, oddly enough, is proving a very leveller. The crowd recognizes n.o.body amid the hurly-burly of coupes, pony-carts, and taxicabs, each trying to pa.s.s the other. The conglomeration of personalities effaces the ident.i.ty alike of the statesman and the artist, the savant and the cyprian. No six-inch rules hedge the shade of the trees and limit the glory of the gra.s.s. The _ouvrier_ can bring his brood and his basket and have his picnic where he pleases. The pastry cook and his chere amie, the coiffeur and his grisette can spoon by the lake-side as long as the moonlight lasts, and longer if they list, with never a gendarme to say them nay, or a rude voice out of the depths hoa.r.s.ely to declaim, "allez!" The Bois de Boulogne is literally and absolutely a playground, the playground of the people, and this last Sunday of mine, not fewer than half a million of Parisians were making it their own.
Half of these encircled the Longchamps racecourse. The other half were shared by the boats upon the lagoons and the bosky dells under the summer sky and the cafes and the restaurants with which the Bois abounds. Our party, having exhausted the humors of the drive, repaired to Pre Catalan. Aside from the "two old brides" who are always in evidence on such occasions, there was a veritable "young couple,"
exceedingly pretty to look at, and delightfully in love! That sort of thing is not so uncommon in Paris as cynics affect to think.
If it be true, as the witty Frenchman observes, that "gambling is the recreation of gentlemen and the pa.s.sion of fools," it is equally true that love is a game where every player wins if he sticks to it and is loyal to it. Just as credit is the foundation of business is love both the a.s.set and the trade-mark of happiness. To see it is to believe it, and--though a little cash in hand is needful to both--where either is wanting, look out for sheriffs and scandals.
Pre Catalan, once a pasture for cows with a pretty kiosk for the sale of milk, has latterly had a tea-room big enough to seat a thousand, not counting the groves which I have seen grow up about it thickly dotted with booths and tables, where some thousands more may regale themselves.
That Sunday it was never so glowing with animation and color. As it makes one happy to see others happy it makes one adore his own land to witness that which makes other lands great.
I have not loved Paris as a Parisian, but as an American; perhaps it is a stretch of words to say I love Paris at all. I used to love to go there and to behold the majesty of France. I have always liked to mark the startling contrasts of light and shade. I have always known what all the world now knows, that beneath the gayety of the French there burns a patriotic and consuming fire, a high sense of public honor; a fine spirit of self-sacrifice along with the sometimes too aggressive spirit of freedom. In 1873 I saw them two blocks long and three files deep upon the Rue St. Honore press up to the Bank of France, old women and old men with their little all tied in handkerchiefs and stockings to take up the tribute required by Bismarck to rid the soil of the detested German.
They did it. Alone they did it--the French people--the hard-working, frugal, loyal commonalty of France--without asking the loan of a sou from the world outside.
VI
Writing of that last Sunday in the Bois de Boulogne, I find by recurring to the record that I said: "There is a deal more of good than bad in every Nation. I take off my hat to the French. But, I have had my fling and I am quite ready to go home. Even amid the gayety and the glare, the splendor of color and light, the Hungarian band wafting to the greenery and the stars the strains of the delicious waltz, La Veuve Joyeuse her very self--yea, many of her--tapping the time at many adjacent tables, the song that fills my heart is "Hame, Hame, Hame!--Hame to my ain countree." Yet, to come again, d"ye mind? I should be loath to say good-by forever to the Bois de Boulogne. I want to come back to Paris.
I always want to come back to Paris. One needs not to make an apology or give a reason.
"We turn rather sadly away from Pre Catalan and the Cafe Cascade.
We glide adown the flower-bordered path and out from the cl.u.s.ters of Chinese lanterns, and leave the twinkling groves to their music and merry-making. Yonder behind us, like a sentinel, rises Mont Valerien.
Before us glimmer the lamps of uncountable coaches, as our own, veering toward the city, the moon just topping the tower of St. Jacques de la Boucherie and silver-plating the bronze figures upon the Arch of Stars.
"We enter the Port Maillot. We turn into the Avenue du Bois. Presently we shall sweep with the rest through the Champs elysees and on to the ocean of the infinite, the heart of the mystery we call Life, nowhere so condensed, so palpable, so appealing. Roll the screen away! The shades of Clovis and Genevieve may be seen hand-in-hand with the shades of Martel and Pepin, taking the round of the ghost-walk between St. Denis and St. Germain, now le Balafre and again Navarre, now the a.s.sa.s.sins of the Ligue and now the a.s.sa.s.sins of the Terror, to keep them company. Nor yet quite all on murder bent, some on pleasure; the Knights and Ladies of the Cloth of Gold and the hosts of the Renaissance: Cyrano de Bergerac and Francois Villon leading the ragam.u.f.fin procession; the jades of the Fronde, Longueville, Chevreuse and fair-haired Anne of Austria; and Ninon, too, and Manon; and the never-to-be-forgotten Four, "one for all and all for one;" Cagliostro and Monte Cristo; on the side, Rabelais taking notes and laughing under his cowl. Catherine de Medici and Robespierre slinking away, poor, guilty things, into the pale twilight of the Dawn!
"Names! Names! Only names? I am not just so sure about that. In any event, what a roll call! We are such stuff as dreams are made of, and our little life is rounded by a sleep; the selfsame sleep which these, our living dead men and women in steel armor and gauzy muslins, in silken hose and sock and buskin, epaulettes and top boots, brocades and buff facings, have endured so long and know so well!
"If I should die in Paris I should expect them--or some of them--to meet me at the barriers and to say, "Behold, the wickedness that was done in the world, the cruelty and the wrong, dwelt in the body, not in the soul of man, which freed from its foul incas.e.m.e.nt, purified and made eternal by the hand of death, shall see both the glory and the hand of G.o.d!""
It was not to be. I shall not die in Paris. I shall never come again.
Neither shall I make apology for this long quotation by myself from myself, for am I not inditing an autobiography, so called?
Chapter the Sixteenth
Monte Carlo--The European Shrine of Sport and Fashion--Apocryphal Gambling Stories--Leopold, King of the Belgians--An Able and Picturesque Man of Business
I
Having disported ourselves in and about Paris, next in order comes a journey to the South of France--that is to the Riviera--by geography the main circle of the Mediterranean Sea, by proclamation Cannes, Nice, and Mentone, by actual fact and count, Monte Carlo--even the swells adopting a certain hypocrisy as due to virtue.
Whilst Monte Carlo is chiefly, I might say exclusively, identified in the general mind with gambling, and was indeed at the outset but a gambling resort, it long ago outgrew the limits of the Casino, becoming a Mecca of the world of fashion as well as the world of sport. Half the ruling sovereigns of Europe and all the leaders of European swelldom, the more prosperous of the demi-mondaines and no end of the merely rich of every land, congregate there and thereabouts. At the top of the season the show of opulence and impudence is bewildering.
The little princ.i.p.ality of Monaco is hardly bigger than the Cabbage Patch of the renowned Mrs. Wiggs. It is, however, more happily situate.
Nestled under the heights of La Condamine and Tete de Chien and looking across a sheltered bay upon the wide and blue Mediterranean, it has better protection against the winds of the North than Nice, or Cannes, or Mentone. It is an appanage--in point of fact the only estate--remaining to the once powerful Grimaldi family.
In the early days of land-piracy Old Man Grimaldi held his own with Old Man Hohenzollern and Old Man Hapsburg. The Savoys and the Bourbons were kith and kin. But in the long run of Freebooting the Grimaldis did not keep up with the procession. How they retained even this remnant of inherited brigandage and self-appointed royalty, I do not know. They are here under leave of the Powers and the especial protection, strange to say, of the French Republic.
Something over fifty years ago, being hard-up for cash, the Grimaldi of the period fell under the wiles of an ingenious Alsatian gambler, Guerlac by name, who foresaw that Baden-Baden and Hombourg were approaching their finish and that the sports must look elsewhere for their living, the idle rich for their sport. This tiny "enclave" in French territory presented many advantages over the German Dukedoms. It was an independent sovereignty issuing its own coins and postage stamps.
It was in proud possession of a half-dozen policemen which it called its "army." It was paradisaic in beauty and climate. Its "ruler" was as poor as Job"s turkey, but by no means as proud as Lucifer.
The bargain was struck. The gambler smote the rock of Monte Carlo as with a wand of enchantment and a stream of plenty burst forth. The mountain-side responded to the touch. It chortled in its glee and blossomed as the rose.
II
The region known as the Riviera comprises, as I have said, the whole land-circle of the Mediterranean Sea. But, as generally written and understood, it stands for the sh.o.r.eline between Ma.r.s.eilles and Genoa.
The two cities are connected by the Corniche Road, built by the First Napoleon, who learned the need of it when he made his Italian campaign, and the modern railway, the distance 260 miles, two-thirds of the way through France, the residue through Italy, and all of it surpa.s.sing fine.
The climate is very like that of Southern Florida. But as in Florida they have the "Nor"westers" and the "Nor"easters," on the Riviera they have the "mistral." In Europe there is no perfect winter weather north of Spain, as in the United States none north of Cuba.
I have often thought that Havana might be made a dangerous rival of Monte Carlo under the one-man power, exercising its despotism with benignant intelligence and spending its income honestly upon the development of both the city and the island. The motley populace would probably be none the worse for it. The Government could upon a liberal tariff collect not less than thirty-five millions of annual revenue.
Twenty-five of these millions would suffice for its own support.
Ten millions a year laid out upon harbors, roadways and internal improvements in general would within ten years make the Queen of the Antilles the garden spot and playground of Christendom. They would build a Casino to outshine even the architectural miracles of Charles Garnier.
Then would Havana put Cairo out of business and give the Prince of Monaco a run for his money.
With the opening of every Monte Carlo season the newspapers used to tell of the colossal winnings of purely imaginary players. Sometimes the favored child of chance was a Russian, sometimes an Englishman, sometimes an American. He was usually a myth, of course. As Mrs. Prig observed to Mrs. Camp, "there never was no sich person."
III
Charles Garnier, the Parisian architect, came and built the Casino, next to the Library of Congress at Washington and the Grand Opera House at Paris the most beautiful building in the world, with incomparable gardens and commanding esplanades to set it off and display it.