"As to Monaco history," remarked Inness, carelessly, when the Professor ceased, "I happen to remember a few items. The Grimaldis came next to Hercules, and have had possession here since A.D. 980. Marshal Boucicault, who was extremely devout, and never missed hearing two masses a day, besieged the place and took it before Columbus and the other Boucicault discovered America. In the reign of Louis the Fourteenth a Prince of Monaco was sent as ambassador to Rome, and entered that city with horses shod in silver, the shoes held by one nail only, so that they might drop the sooner. Another Prince of Monaco went against the Turks with his galleys, and brought back to this shore the inestimable gift of the prickly-pear, for which we all bless his memory whenever we brush against its cheerful thorns. Three Princes of Monaco were murdered in their own palace, which of course was much more home-like than being murdered elsewhere. The Duke of York died there also: not murdered, I believe, although there is a ghost in the story. The principality is now three miles long, and the present prince retains authority under the jurisdiction of France. To preserve this authority he maintains a strictly disciplined standing army (they never sit down) of ten able-bodied men."
These sentences were rolled out by Inness with such rapidity that I was quite bewildered; as for the Professor, he was hopelessly stranded half-way down the list, and never came any farther.
Passing Monte Carlo, we drove over to the palace.
"Certainly there is no town on the Riviera so beautifully situated as Monaco," I said, as the road swept around the little port and ascended the opposite slope. "The high rock on which it stands, jutting out boldly into the sea, gives it all the isolation of an island, and yet protects by its peninsula this clear deep little harbor within."
The old town of Monaco proper is on the top of this rocky presqu'ile, three hundred feet above the sea, and west of Monte Carlo, the suburb of Condamine, and the chapel of St. Devote. Leaving the carriages, we entered the portal of the palace, conducted by a tenth of the standing army.
"My first living and roofed palace," said Janet, as we ascended the broad flight of marble steps leading to the "Court of Honor," which was glowing with recently renewed frescos. A solemn man in black received us, and conducted us with much dignity through thirteen broad, long rooms, with ceilings thirty feet high—a procession of stately apartments which left upon our minds a blurred general impression of gilded vases, crimson curtains, slippery floors, ormolu clocks, wreaths of painted roses, fat Cupids, and uninhabitableness. The only trace of home life in all the shining vista was a little picture of the present Prince, taken when he was a baby, a life-like, chubby little fellow, smiling unconcernedly out on all this cold splendor. It was amusing to see how we women gathered around this little face, with a sort of involuntary comfort.
In the Salle Grimaldi there was a vast chimney-piece of one block of marble covered with carved devices.
In the room where the Duke of York died there was a broad bed on a platform, curtained and canopied with heavy damask, and surrounded by a gilded railing. We stood looking at this structure in silence.
"It is very impressive," murmured Mrs. Trescott at last. Then, with a long reminiscent sigh, as if she had been present and chief mourner on the occasion, she added: "There is nothing more inscrutable than the feet of the flying hours: they are winged!—winged!"
