The bank of Monte Carlo is honest as the Bank of England. No hint of trickery has ever been associated with it, but outside the Casino there are gambling resorts of a different character. It is said that more money is lost at the private gambling clubs of Nice in a night than at Monte Carlo in a week; and whether or not this is true, it is certain that more men are ruined in these outside gambling hells than in the Casino. The game at the latter place is fair; only cash stakes are allowed; there is no bar and anyone drunk enough to make a scene is expelled. At many of the private clubs the play is dishonest; I. O. U's are accepted; and a drunken fool may gamble away not only all he has with him, but all he has elsewhere or ever expects to have, and more. Not all of the suicides along the Riviera are due to M. Blanc's gambling palace.
It is difficult to keep away from the subject of the gambling when one talks of Monte Carlo. A famous show of frocks and jewels and women is on view there; the fashions of the coming summer are launched there; the social game is played with verve and zest there; But, at a distance, one remembers rather the crowd around the green tables under the great chandeliers, the flushed faces, the twitching mouths, the trembling hands, and the uncanny, oppressive, breathless hush that follows the croupier's "Rien ne va plus."
CHAPTER XI
LES AMERICAINES
Many Americans swing round the calendar with the fashionable Parisiennes. Some of them, having married into the innermost circles of the French aristocracy, belong to the most exclusive French set and jealously guard their privileges, associating little with their own countrywomen of the American colony, for there is a world of difference between the Parisian social standing of the American woman who has married into an aristocratic French family and the American woman of the American colony. The latter may be brilliant, popular, and rich, may entertain extravagantly and live in a whirl of gaiety; but, as a rule, there are certain Parisian salons to which she has not the entrée, certain doors stubbornly closed to her, despite her beauty and wit and wealth. There are exceptions, of course, but, generally speaking, the hostess of the American colony does not have upon her visiting list the names of the greatest ladies of the French set. Her dinners cost more than any given in the Faubourg St. Germain, her cotillion favours are a nine days' Parisian wonder, she draws round her a wealthy and amusing circle of fellow Americans and foreigners, but she has not the open sesame to French doors which other Americans have gained by marriage,—paying dearly sometimes for their social privileges.
The American colony is a shifting, transient thing, changing continually, yet always the same in its general character and always an important factor in Parisian life. Americans living in other parts of Europe drift into Paris at some seasons to swell this colony, or join the crowd on the Riviera or on the Normandy coast; and then there is always the casual visitor, the American who runs over to Europe for frocks or frivolity, but makes no pretence of living abroad.
Among this last group are a majority of the smartest folk of American society, and a number of these passing visitors are accorded social honours seldom granted to the resident American in Paris. It is among these women, too, that the Parisian tradesmen find their most profitable patrons, and a large percentage of the loveliest confections turned out by the great dressmakers of Paris is carried away in the trunks of private American customers.