Now the road turns aside through the village of Monaco, and on the right he saw in front of him the bold promontory of Monaco rising three hundred and fifty feet above the sea, which washed three of its sides where they dipped almost perpendicularly into the blue waters. All the way along on either side were lovely villas surrounded by well-kept gardens filled with flowers of every hue and kind. Cacti, palms, aloes, camphor trees, monkey trees, citron and orange trees abounded, the latter filling the air with their fragrant perfume. In the largest gardens they observed numerous specimens of the cedar of Lebanon, flat-topped pines, arancarius, Californian pines—the whole contributing to make this spot a veritable garden of Eden.
At length they passed a large jeweller's shop with a magnificent display of diamond and ruby rings in a case in the window.
"See here," cried Marcel, "the very thing." He went in and asked to be allowed to inspect a selection of engagement rings. Having made his choice he became so engrossed with admiring the various objects of art that Riche, getting tired, told his friend that he would stroll slowly on, and bid him follow on after he had finished.
It was fully half an hour before Marcel had completed his inventory of the shop, when looking at his watch was surprised to find how time had slipped by. Hurrying out Marcel walked rapidly in the direction where he knew he would find his friend. He had not gone more than a mile when he suddenly heard a babel of voices, and to his surprise saw a large crowd surrounding a Piedmontese beggar holding a brown bear by a chain. The man was violently gesticulating at a gentleman who was trying to defend himself against the menaces of the crowd, and was struggling with two gendarmes who appeared anxious to arrest him.
"Hullo, Riche!" cried Marcel, running breathlessly up and pushing his way to him through the crowd. "What's up? What are they pulling you about for?"
"I saw this brute of an Italian belabouring his bear over the head with a stick, and pulling the chain until his nose was covered with blood, and my blood was up, so I gave the fellow a taste of the beating that he had given the bear, and then the gendarmes, hearing the row, came up and arrested me."
Riche struggled with the gendarmes, tried to get free, and twisting his leg between those of one of the gendarmes Jiu-Jitsu fashion, threw him on the ground.
Marcel flung himself on the officer, and Riche would have got free, but the second slipped a noose of whip-cord over Riche's wrist, and drawing it tight, twisted it with a bit of stick so violently that he almost fainted with the pain.
Marcel was struggling on the ground with the officer, when a third policeman pushed his way through the crowd, and they were promptly marched away as prisoners towards the gendarmerie, followed by a crowd of idlers.
"What have those Allemands done?" cried a workman in a blouse, to his boon companion who was smoking the filthy stump of a cigarette.