The Gambling.—The strictures bestowed upon the gaming rooms are apt to be a little violent and sweeping. I assume that no one can say a word in favour of gambling, nor even excuse it. It is no doubt a feeble apology to claim that there are degrees of gambling, that every race-course and every Bourse exhibits a more pernicious and more damaging form of “play” than can be laid to the charge of the Casino. The gambler at Monte Carlo injures no one directly but himself. He knows at least that the Administration is above suspicion and that the same virtue cannot be claimed for the whole body of bookmakers. Gambling on the public markets may implicate innocent people to their undoing and when it deals with the necessaries of life and leads to the making of “corners” in this commodity or in that it may involve a whole community in loss and distress. There is indeed a wide difference between gambling with plaques on a green cloth and gambling with corn.
MONTE CARLO: THE TERRACE, CHRISTMAS DAY.
Play at the Casino is for the reckless rich and the foolish and these happen to be two varieties of mankind peculiarly difficult to control. When once it is understood that, in the long run, the Tables must win and do win then let the poor man be advised. The fool will not accept advice, the rich man does not need it and so the game goes on.
It is, no doubt, an equally feeble defence to point out that the Casino does great good with its gains. It keeps the little principality in perfect order and makes it a reliable health resort. It is no vain boast to say that Monte Carlo is the cleanest and trimmest town in France, that it is dustless and that its sanitation is good. The Casino provides the police and the public officers, maintains the roads and a garden which is the delight of many, while it affords to its people a degree of comfort and security which is not to be belittled at the present day. Moreover through funds derived from the Administration churches and museums are built, schools and hospitals are maintained and real poverty is abolished. These facts do not make gambling a virtue, but they serve to temper a slashing and wholly destructive criticism.
A large proportion of people gamble for what they call “the fun of the thing.” The term is difficult to define, but if they find amusement and can afford that amusement there is little to be said.
It is unnecessary to describe the salles de jeu. They have been pictured—with exact or inexact details—a hundred times and have figured more often in works of fiction than have any other actual apartments in the world. The miscellaneous people who cluster round the tables are said to provide an interesting study in faces. The study is limited. All are supposed to be “playing”—playing, it may be assumed, as children play at a game—but their countenances are so sad and so serious that a stranger to the “games” of modern life might think that they were sitting round a post-mortem table with a deceased person laid out on the cloth. An observer, endowed with especial gifts might detect evidences of greed, of anxiety, of despair, of forlorn hope, but to an ordinary looker-on there is little to note beyond a general expression of uneasy boredom.
The Pigeon Shooting.—There is one blot on Monte Carlo—a large, crimson blot—in the form of the pigeon shooting. This diversion takes place on a pleasant green just below the terrace of the Casino, between it and the sea. There lies a level lawn upon which one might expect to see lads and lasses playing croquet; but in the centre of the grass are certain slabs of concrete arranged in a curve with horrible precision. They may be the marks upon which blindfolded criminals are stood when ranged out to be shot, but this execution yard is used for a different purpose.
On the concrete disks, when the sport is in progress, iron traps are placed and into each of these a pigeon, half-crazed with fright, is stuffed. The trap drops open with a clatter, the bird sees before it the quiet blue of heaven, rises on its wings, and in a second is either maimed or dead. If not too badly wounded it may flutter over the fence and fall into the sea to be grabbed by a man in a boat, for some half-dozen boats are always waiting under the lee of the rock for such choice windfalls.