Dagonet Abroad

by George R. Sims

The poem is long. But it shows that the Arab is devoted to his horse. Well, I have seen the Arab’s devotion to his horse, and I’m very sorry for the animal. The cruelty of the Arab to his steed is something beyond expression. The Arab starves his steed and beats it mercilessly. He works it to death. The steed is covered with raw and bleeding wounds, and when the Arab wants to make his steed go faster he runs a sharp stick into one of the open wounds. ‘My beautiful, my beautiful!’ O, Poetry, what sins you have to answer for! I shall never read those beautiful verses again without saying ‘Bosh!’ The Arab who loved his horse, and the horse that was so beautiful, have gone over for ever, so far as I am concerned, to the great majority—the majority of lost illusions.

While in Algiers I was indebted to my coachman for much of my information. My coachman was a Gascon, and he Gasconaded to his heart’s content. He drove us about day by day, and told us stories which would have made Baron Munchausen look to his laurels. I let him have his fling, and then, in the language of the ring, I ‘took him on.’ I began to tell him stories of England. He listened at first in calm and childlike faith, but at last he saw that I was playing him at his own game. Then the old African hills resounded with his Homeric laughter, and he became my sworn friend. He slapped me on the back and said I was a fine fellow, and he liked the English because they were not proud like the French, but cracked jokes with a coachman.

My coachman’s friendship became gradually a little too obtrusive. One day, having to rest his horses in order to take us a sixty-mile drive into the interior the next day, and having drawn twenty francs on account of his fare, he spent his spare time in drinking my health. Unfortunately, he strolled about the town as well, and was continually meeting me. Every time we met he insisted on shaking hands and slapping me on the back. I didn’t mind it at quiet corners, but when I was talking to the Governor-General and his charming daughters on the Place du Gouvernement, I must confess that I was taken aback to find myself suddenly embraced by my affectionate Jehu, who, in accents slightly thick and alcoholised, called me his brother, and implored Heaven to witness that I was his best friend. The Governor smiled, the lovely daughters tittered, and I felt that my dignity as a distinguished stranger had suffered a slight concussion.

But my coachman was quite sober on the morning of our departure. He drove us to the quay, and refused any fare. He wept on both our shoulders, and as the Arab boatman rowed us out to the ship, the brave Gascon fell upon his knees upon the African soil and prayed that we might soon come back and gladden his eyes and shake his hand and tell him stories again.

Achmet, too, came to see us off. Achmet was married the day before we left. I made up his five pounds, and he bought his little wife and took her home. ‘Well, Achmet,’ I said, ‘did the old woman tell you the truth?’ ‘Ah, Sidi,’ replied the young man, ‘I am the happiest young Arab in all Algiers. Give me your name, that I may call the first son that Allah shall bless me with after my benefactor.’ I didn’t give him my real name, but I gave him my nom de plume, and so I dare say before I visit Algiers again the followers of the Prophet will number among them for the first time in the history of the faith a Mohammedan named Dagonet.

CHAPTER XI.
MONTE CARLO.

‘The Beauty Spot of the Riviera’ is the flattering title which a resident English physician has given to his book upon Monte Carlo. It is getting difficult nowadays to give a new name to a place which has been raved about, reviled, flattered, slandered, discussed, and described ad nauseam. That it is a paradise is a fact as widely advertised as that somebody’s soap is matchless for the complexion, and that somebody else’s mustard is the best. It is a paradise—a fool’s paradise. All that Nature could do to make Monte Carlo beautiful she has done. She has painted the lily and adorned the rose in her endeavour to make the famous mount queen of the Riviera. Monte Carlo is a beautiful poem set to music; but the poem is the one in which the singer tells us that ‘all save the spirit of man is divine.’ When I arrived in Monte Carlo, my first impression was that I had made a mistake, and taken a ticket for Kempton Park; but the scenery was slightly against such a theory. I looked at the sea, and then I thought that in a fit of absence of mind I might have got mixed on the railway and in my dates, and that I had been landed at Brighton during the Sussex fortnight. The sun was hot, the sea was blue, and the bookmakers and the backers that one is accustomed to meet at a race meeting were airing themselves in light costumes and yellow boots along the principal promenades. But palm-trees, and marble staircases, and cacti and eucalypti, and prickly pear-trees, and sunny mountain slopes dotted with white villas are not the characteristic features of London-super-Mare. I gradually awoke to the fact that I was on the Mediterranean, and at Monte Carlo in January; but you can understand my being a little bit mixed at first when I tell you that the only people I met during the first half-hour of my sojourn in the principality were either English bookmakers, English backers, or English racehorse owners.

Let me briefly trace the interesting history of a place which is now world-famous, and is becoming every year more and more a place of English resort. In the old days, when the railway came no further than Nice, someone had permission from the Prince of Monaco to keep a roulette-table in the old town. There were so few customers that the game did not pay, and it was on the point of being given up when Blanc, knowing that the doom of the German gaming-tables was imminent, began to look about for a spot in which he could carry on his business when his German premises were closed. He came to Monaco, and saw the situation. He made an offer for the concession, took it over, and when the German tables were closed he transported his business to the shores of the Mediterranean.

All the world knows how the affair prospered, how Blanc died, how his daughter married Prince Roland Bonaparte, and how the affair was turned into a company. But what all the world does not know is that since Blanc’s death the management has steadily degenerated, until it has become absolutely objectionable.

A special Providence seems to watch over this delightful, romantic, wicked, enchanting little spot. Monte Carlo escaped damage from the earthquake which shattered the neighbouring places, and she is always spared the snow and ice which occasionally remind one of winter in Nice. She seems, indeed, to bear a charmed life, for nothing affects her prosperity, and nothing damages her beauty. I fell an instant victim to her wiles. I had not been in the place half an hour before I wanted to come and live there for ever. Every turn reveals some new beauty, every hour brings some fresh pleasure, and you begin to wonder how it is possible that there can be so many melancholy looking people in such a heavenly spot, unless you remember that the little ball rolls from morning till night, and that the majority of people who come to Monte Carlo come to gamble, and, as a natural consequence, to lose their money.