Jimmy insisted on staking a louis for me and another for Aunt Mary, who was enraptured when, she won thirteen louis, and would have given up dinner to go on playing if she hadn't lost her winnings and more besides.
When we sat down to our table at the restaurant she was quite depressed, but everything was so bright and gay that she soon cheered up. Our tablecloth was strewn all over with roses and huge bluey-purple violets, and the dinner was pluperfect. There was a great coming and going of overdressed women and rather loud young men, which amused me, but I think it would soon pall. I can't imagine any feeling of rest or peace at Monte Carlo, not even in the gardens. To stop long in the place would be like always breathing perfume or eating spice.
We had finished dinner, and Jimmy was paying the bill (I couldn't help seeing that it was of enormous length), when the scraping of chairs behind us advertised that a new party had arrived at the table back of ours. A noisy, loud-talking party it was-all men, by the voices, and one of those voices sounded remotely familiar. The owner of it seemed to be telling an amusing story, which had been interrupted by entering the restaurant and taking seats. "Well, she simply jumped at it like a trout at a mayfly," the man was saying, as I sat wondering where I'd heard the voice before. "I couldn't help feeling a bit of a beast to impose on Yankee innocence. But all's fair in love and motor-cars. This was the most confounded thing ever designed; a kind of ironmonger's shop on wheels. And the girl was deuced pretty--"
The word "motor-car" brought it all back, and in a flash I crossed Europe from the restaurant in Monte Carlo to the village hotel at Cobham. I looked round and into the face of Mr. Cecil-Lanstown.
Aunt Mary looked too, for the bill was paid, and we were getting up to go. Our eyes met in the midst of his sentence; the man half rose, but dropped down again with a silly smile, and I gave him one of those elaborate glances that begin with a person's boots and work slowly up to the necktie. Just as we were sweeping past Aunt Mary said in a loud aside to me, "Did you ever see such a creature? And I took him for a duke." I think he heard.
In the Casino gardens we saw the moon rise out of the sea, and never shall I forget the glory of it. But just the very beauty of everything made me feel sad. So stupid of me. I really don't think I can be well lately. I must take a tonic or a nerve pill. We went back to Nice for the night, and next morning we drove to Mentone, where I decided that I would rather stay for a long time than anywhere else on the Riviera. It is just the sweetest, dearest little picture-place, with the natural, country peacefulness that others lack, and yet there's all the gaiety and life of a town. We drove to it along the upper road, which is almost startlingly magnificent. I asked Brown to go slowly, so that we might sip the scenery instead of bolting it. Though the Napier could have gone romping up the steep road out of Nice to the Observatory, and on to quaint La Turbie, I chose a pace of six or seven miles an hour, often stopping at picturesque corners to drink in sapphire draughts of sea and sky. Coming this way from Nice to Mentone we skipped Monte Carlo altogether, only looking down from La Turbie on its roofs, on the glittering Casino, and the gloomy, rock-set castle of Monaco.
And, oh, by the way, Jimmy wasn't with us on that drive, nor has he joined us yet, though he threatens to (if that word isn't too ungracious) a little farther on in Italy. He stayed behind in Nice to take care of Lord Lane. Aunt Mary thinks that shows such a sweet disposition; but I'm not sure. I believe that Montie is a marquis.
We stopped near Mentone, at Cap Martin, which of course you don't know, as it's rather new. And it was lovely there, up high on a hill, among sweet-smelling pines. It was pleasant to be alone with Aunt Mary again, and I was nicer to her than I have been, I'm afraid, since Pau and Jimmy. I should have loved to stay a long while (and it would be jolly to come back for the carnival, though I don't suppose we shall), but there was such a thrill in the thought of Italy being near that I grew restless. Italy! Italy! I heard the name ringing in my ears like the "horns of elfland."
Now we are in it-Italy, I mean, not elfland, though it seems much the same to unsophisticated me for mystery and colour; and it is good to have warm-hearted Christmas for our first day. The one jarring note in the Italian "entrance music" was at the frontier. I think I wrote you how, when we landed at Dieppe from England, about a hundred years ago, I had to pay a deposit to the custom-house for the right to take my car into France. That money I should have got back at Mentone on leaving the country if the late-lamented Dragon had still been in existence, but as it vanished in smoke and flame the money has vanished too. Brown, however (or, rather, Brown's master), paid a similar deposit on the Napier, and passing the French custom-house on the outskirts of Mentone, the Lightning Conductor asked my permission to stop, that he might present Mr. Winston's papers and get the money back to send to England.