When déjeuner is ended there are many ways of passing what is left of the day. The terrace is thronged during the late morning hours, and if one has breakfasted early enough there is time for a stroll there—a stroll that calls for a smart costume, if one makes pretence of being truly chic. Up and down the beautiful promenade saunter the idlers—a crowd as interesting and as mixed as that of the promenade des Anglais or the promenade at Trouville. Past they file, rosy-cheeked, middle-class Englishwomen in ill-fitting frocks, consummately modish Parisiennes, notorious in Monte Carlo as at home, fat German Jewesses, American girls chaperoning their tired and patient parents, French, American, and English actresses, great ladies from all countries, men of every type, from hard-faced chevalier d'industrie to reigning monarch, from gilded youth to elderly roué.
The Crowd at Monte Carlo
One sees many a new fashion note on the Monte Carlo terrace, and, later, costumes still more chic are in evidence at the Casino concert, to which come music lovers from all the neighbouring resorts, for the Monte Carlo orchestra is one of the best in Europe and even moralists who have serious scruples to forbid their gambling do not hesitate to take advantage of the concerts provided by the profits of the tables.
For the sporting contingent there is driving and motoring during the early afternoon, before the chill creeps into the air; and on the terrace overlooking the grounds of the International Pigeon Shooting Club there is always a crowd watching the shooting below. Butchery rather than sport, this pigeon shooting, but the Monte Carlo club is the most famous in the world and draws the crack shots from all countries. Betting runs high among the sportsmen and the onlookers, and the club events are a great source of entertainment to those who have heart and stomach for such sport.
After the tea hour, the Casino begins to fill with the crowd that is its mainstay, the high-playing, heavily plunging, extravagant crowd, willing to buy excitement at any price, and some of the heaviest gambling is done in those hours just before the dinner. The hush grows more pronounced, more oppressive, and the croupier's monotonous voice sounds more clearly in its maddening iteration, "Messieurs, Mesdames, faites vos jeux.—Les jeux sont faits. Rien ne va plus."
Every seat at the tables is filled, crowds are clustering behind the chairs, leaning forward to play, watching with excitement an unusual run of good or bad luck, but quiet, intent, absorbed. There is never noise and confusion, never an outbreak that can create scandal. A battalion of official employees attends to that, and quickly, effectually suppresses any objectionable scene.
Monsieur François Blanc, who was responsible for Monte Carlo, was fond of saying that he had made and kept the place "absolutely respectable." He is dead now, this M. Blanc, but before he died he built a cathedral not far from his Casino, and in a mortuary chapel of the cathedral reposes the old Prince of Monaco, who granted to M. Blanc the rights that made Monte Carlo possible.
The scoffer smiles at that cathedral; and yet M. Blanc offered it to le bon Dieu in all sincerity. He was a quiet, unpretentious little man, devoted to his family, charitable, abstemious in his habits, playing no game save billiards, gambling not at all, a good man so far as personal life went, and without scruples concerning his gambling paradise. He insisted rigidly that play at Monte Carlo should be under absolutely fair conditions. As for running a great gambling establishment—it was a business like another. He was not ashamed of his metier and allowed no threats nor pleas nor argument to disturb him. Men and women would gamble.—Eh bien, here was a beautiful place in which they might indulge their propensity without fear of dishonest treatment. If they ruined themselves, if they committed suicide,—that was their affair. They would have done the same thing elsewhere and he would have preferred their doing it elsewhere, for suicides and scenes interfered somewhat with prosperous business. A host of detectives and attendants was employed by M. Blanc to prevent suicide or hush it up if it occurred, and an official department was established for the purpose of furnishing unlucky patrons of the Casino with money enough to betake themselves elsewhere. Ruined gamblers were eloquently urged not to die upon the premises. Railroad tickets and certain sums of money were supplied to worthy applicants to whose hard luck and financial collapse officials of the gambling rooms could testify. The system was not, however, purely charitable,—M. Blanc did not believe in pauperizing the poor. An I. O. U. was accepted in exchange for funds supplied, and it was understood that this note must be met before the holder could ever again be admitted to the Casino. Some time ago statistics showed that forty thousand pounds had been distributed by this department of ways and means—but that thirty thousand pounds had been repaid. From which one may argue a large proportion of human integrity or of gambling mania, as one is optimist or cynic.