There are two classes of dealers,—croupiers at the roulette-tables and tailleurs at “trente-et-quarante,” each of whom receive from four to six hundred francs a month, according to their experience.
The apprentices, who some day expect to become croupiers,—those who do the raking in,—receive two hundred francs a month. All, however, are under an espionage in all their sleeping, waking, and working moments as keen and observant as if they were bank messengers in Wall Street.
Each roulette-table has a chef and a sous-chef and seven croupiers, who are expected, it is said, to keep their hands spread open before them on the table between all the turns of the wheel. A story is told, which may or may not be true, of a croupier who was inordinately fond of taking snuff. It seemed curious that a coin should always adhere to the bottom of his snuff-box whenever he laid it down upon the table, and accordingly that particular croupier was banished and the practice forbidden.
Another had built himself a nickle-in-the-slot arrangement which, with remarkable celerity, conducted twenty-franc pieces from somewhere on the rim of his exceedingly tall and stiff collar to an unseen money-belt. Every time he scratched his ear, or slapped at an imaginary mosquito, it cost the bank a gold piece. Now high collars are banished and mosquito-netting is at every door and window.
No employee is allowed to play, nor are the Monégasques themselves. All nations are represented in the establishment, French, Italian, Russians, Belgians, and Swiss. Once there was a croupier who spoke English so perfectly that he might be taken for an Englishman or an American, but he proved to be a native of the little land of dikes and windmills, where they teach English in the schools to the youth of a tender age.
The French language reigns and French money is used exclusively. You may cash sovereigns and eagles at the bureau, and you may do your banking business at the counters of the “Crédit-Lyonnais,” which discreetly hangs out its shingle just over the border on French territory, though not a stone’s flight from the Casino portals. You know this because beneath their sign you read another in bold, flaring letters, as if it were the most important of all, “On French Soil.”
The three towns of the Principality of Monaco each present a totally different aspect; but, in spite of all its loveliness, one’s love for Monte Carlo is a sensuous sort of a thing, and it is with a real relief that he turns to admire Monaco itself.
Its story has often been told, but there always seems something new to learn of it. The writer always knew that its flora was to be remarked, even among those horticultural exotics scattered so bountifully all over the Riviera, and that, apparently, the Monégasques had the art instinct highly developed, as evinced by the many beautiful monuments and buildings of the capital; but it was only recently that he realized the excellence of the typographical art of the printers of Monaco. These craftsmen have reached a high degree of proficiency and taste, as evinced by that most excellent production, the “Collection de Documents Historiques,” published by the archivist of the Principality, and the “Résultats des Campagnes Scientifiques Accomplies sur son Yacht, par S. A. le Prince Albert de Monaco.”
Authors the world over might well wish their works produced with so much excellence of typography and so rich a format and impression.
Monaco, small and restricted as it is, is full of surprises and anomalies. It has a ruling monarch, a palace, an army,—of sixty odd, all told,—a bishop and a cathedral all its very own, though the Principality is but three and a half kilometres in length and slightly more than a kilometre in width, its only rival for minuteness being the former province of Heligoland.