CHAPTER X
UNDER SOUTHERN SKIES
For the gambler and the cocotte, the Riviera means merely Monte Carlo. The gambler is drawn by the lure of the green tables in the splendid Casino. The cocotte goes where the money-spending crowd is to be found, where she may show her frocks and her jewels and her beauty, where recklessness and extravagance and excitement are in the air. She gambles, too, carelessly or cannily, according to her temperament, and she loves to make a sensation on the terrace, in the Café de Paris, at Ciro's, or best of all in the Casino, where the apparition that draws attention from the piles of money on the green felt must be startling indeed.
Incidentally she acknowledges that there are wonderful views and dazzling sunshine and invigorating air outside the brilliantly lighted, over-heated Casino, and that these things contribute to her enjoyment; but she is not an ardent nature lover, this Parisienne, and she would find the Riviera deadly dull without the life that centres round the gaming tables.
Even the residential element and the smart hotel set of aristocratic Cannes and Anglo-American Nice, of Cap Martin and Beaulieu and Cimiez and Mentone, feel the fascination of M. Blanc's earthly paradise upon the Monaco promontory and spend considerable time there in the course of the season; but for this class the social season is as important as the gambling, and Monte Carlo is but a single feature of the Riviera scheme.
It has been said that Cannes, Nice, and Monte Carlo represent, respectively, the world, the flesh, and the devil; and the classification is roughly accurate. Cannes has the most exclusive social life along the coast; its villas are occupied by folk whose names rank high in the social blue-books of the European capitals; the registers of its hotels bristle with sounding titles and its swell clubs have membership lists calculated to impress anyone who loves a lord. The Napoule Golf Club at Cannes has a Russian Grand Duke for president and an English Duke for vice-president; and, on the links, counts and barons, belted earls and multi-millionaires, are thick as leaves in Vallambrosa. Even princes and potentates drive off the tees and struggle in the bunkers. One sees rather more of London than of Paris in the crowd, but there are Parisians, too, and they are even more English than the English in their sporting proclivities, for fashion is a more aggressive thing than nature. The whole atmosphere is English at Napoule. From the architecture of the picturesque timbered club-house to the h's of the servants, everything has a fine British flavour, and save for the frocks of the women and the fluent Parisian French dividing honours with English on the links and in the club-house, there is little to remind the guest that he is in France.
Down in the town, and along the famous Promenade de la Croisette, there is a different story. Here, too, a large percentage of the fashionable crowd is English, but the setting is French where it is not Italian. The Croisette, the Promenade des Anglais at Nice, the terrace at Monte Carlo, are three of the most beautiful, the most fashionable, the most amusing promenades in the world, and the idler may spend many profitable hours upon any one of the three; but each has its distinctive flavour just as each of the three towns has its own local colour and its own crowd, though all share alike in the sparkling beauty of the Riviera summer land.
Yachting is an institution even more important than golf in the programme of Cannes. The Cercle Nautique, one of the chief rendezvous for the society set, is exclusive to the last degree, and out in the beautiful harbour splendid sea-going yachts from all parts of Europe and from America are anchored during the season. Some of the yacht owners prefer living in hotels or villas during their sojourn and use the boats for cruising only; but more live aboard their floating palaces, and there is constant going and coming twixt yachts and quai, to the immense entertainment of outsiders who get no nearer than this to the social life at Cannes. Carriages roll up to the landing and deposit wonderfully gowned women and men whose names are whispered knowingly by the watching throng. Launches are waiting to receive the load of fashion and celebrity. There is a tableau of coquetry and chiffons, a shuffling of royal highnesses and wealthy commoners, and the little boats move off toward the yacht, where luncheon will be served on deck under the awnings, to the accompaniment of tinkling mandolins and guitars.
There are worse things even for royalty than to sit at a violet-strewn table under awnings that flap in the soft sea breeze of a sunshiny February day, and, in the intervals of a luncheon prepared by an artist for an epicure, to look off across dimpling blue water to a curving white line of shore where promenaders make bright impressionistic dashes of colour in the sunlight, and to the grove-embowered villas, the imposing, many-pillared hotels, the mediæval little villages that climb the verdure-clad mountains behind the town.