And what a road it is that leads to the still city, winding round and up the steep rock, upon which she sits superb above the waters, a rock hung with rich-hued tapestry of geranium, cactus, rose, and even our old friend the homely blackberry, transformed by the wizardry of the winter sun into splendour of crimson and golden arras. Very few steps past the dazzling new cathedral, that rises snow white above the quiet streets, lead you by a short turn into those strange gardens, that are really enchanted woods of olive, palm, and pine, with glorious flowers for undergrowth, cresting the sheer, sea-fronting steep of rock, down the face of which flowers, gorgeous creepers and hanging plants overflow to the white-combed breakers beneath. Thence the Armida gardens and glaringly vulgar Monte Carlo Casino gleam idealized in frames of olive foliage and pine-boughs, and all the beauty of the vast sweep of coast in its amphitheatre of circling mountains. Nightingale song throbs quick and rich above the deep murmur of surging wave and sighing pine-top, always providing you go at the right time; bees hum and the ring of a sail running down a mast with the wash of steam vessels and motors is faintly heard through the clear and sunny air. You may go back from this fairy land to the racket and worldliness of Monte Carlo through the strange vegetable diablerie and Arabian Nights' charm of the Casino gardens and their surrounding and intermingling shops and restaurants, and enjoy a still more striking contrast in the simple act of taking a seat in what Germans call a go-chair—Fahr-stuhl.
This prosaic modern convenience is found in a small dark enclosure that recalls a prison exercise yard, sunless, squalid. Take a seat in it, and wait patiently until it occurs to the mountain gnome or brownie in charge to work some spell of Nature magic, when the thing rises like the Arabian carpet, and in two minutes all the blazing diamonds, Parisian costumes, and blatant vulgarities centred round the glaring Casino sink and fade into a few blurred scars on the terraced hill-face below. Meanwhile the occupant of the cushioned go-chair winds and soars between cultivated vine and lemon terraces, scattered at intervals, with here and there a homestead and here and there a pergola and flower-garden, but mainly through woods of black-coned, light-foliaged Mediterranean pine and huge gnarled olives, black-fruited, of inconceivable antiquity, their grey columnar trunks writhen by secular, perhaps millennial, storms, rising from rich red soil between pale grey boulders—soars and winds up the vast sides of the mighty gorge, so thick and dark with olive and pine that the sparsely scattered brightness of vine and lemon and mimosa is lost among dense foliage; winds and soars till the woods thin and orange, olive, and myrtles are left far below, the gardens and vineyards grow poorer, the air keener, and the long, craggy bluff ending in the Tête du Chien is scaled, and the go-chair stops finally under the shadow of the stately Roman tower of Turbia, massive and scarcely worn by time, but half ruined by the wanton violence of eighteenth-century spoilers.
And ever as the crude luxury and meretricious ornament of the pleasure-town sinks, the splendour of the sea-bounded prospect spreads and grows, from the purple majesty of Bordighera headland, running down from its Alpine background, to the promontory of Cap d'Ail beyond the craggy bluff that shelters Monte Carlo; with many a sheltered town and towered villa and headland stepping into foam-fringed bays, enclosed in the grand sweep of mountain coast. Just within the curve of the deep gorge under Turbia the Irish-looking column of Les Moulins stands up clear and gaunt far below, on the level-topped rock fringed with wood; Monaco shows bright and distinct on the broad plain of vivid blue sea, and, the centre of all, softened and lessened by distance, the white marble domes of the Casino are traced upon the liquid sapphire, vulgar no more, but lovely as if seen through
"Magic casements, opening on the foam
Of perilous seas in faery lands forlorn."
Only nothing is forlorn in this land of light and colour; all is gay, friendly, full of laughter and life.
Yet on a certain radiant forenoon the Fahr-stuhl, or rope-railway, lifted through all this wild poetic beauty a healthy, full-blooded young Englishman, bright-eyed and well-groomed, blind to all.
He had wandered, aimless and unseeing, through the contrasted charm and picturesque strength of Monaco, strolled by the tiny harbour, up the hill, through the weird suggestion of writhen bone-like cactus-trees and richness of palm and aloe, caroub and rose and glowing flower-bed, past Casino and hotel, still unseeing, his features, made for facile laughter and easy geniality, lined by care and drawn into heavy frowns. From the gardens of Monaco he had looked long and wistfully into the sea breaking so softly at the rock foot, and once again by the harbour, with a sort of irresolute longing that came to nothing. In the funicular he had read and re-read letters, and made calculations with pencilled figures, and then with weary impatience torn them up and scattered them where the line ran steep and sheer above the gorge.
And when he stepped out upon the craggy mountain rim at Turbia, his listless feet took him to the plaster hotel tracing its mean outlines upon the sky, beside the majesty of the fine tower that marks Cæsar's subjection of conquered Liguria—subject to so many masters since—to Rome.
Perhaps he only went that way because the other occupants of the go-chair, the lady with blackened eyes and red curls pinned outside her hat-brim, the gentleman with the hooked nose, shiny hair, and vast white waistcoat, the grave family party scattering exclamations of Wunderschön, Prachtvoll, Echt malerisch, on the sunny air, the mature maidens, absorbed in Baedekers, and lordly, tweed-clad Britons, conversing in grunts, went straight from the rich flesh-pots of Monte Carlo to the oil and wine of a mean restaurant perched on the stately crag-wall, making the centre view point for scores of miles round.
For when he found himself in the grounds looking down upon the vast splendour of mountain and sea, he seemed to recollect himself, turned and went through the village that lies modestly behind the Roman tower, over cobbled paths, under Roman archways, through narrow streets, picturesque with loggia and outside stair and dark-arched entrance, through wide, pleasant spaces planted with trees and scattered with long blocks of limestone, used as seats, and polished to marble by the friction of generations; here meeting a slow-paced pack-mule, peasant-led; here a woman, wearing a huge and heavy basket on her head, like a crown; and here a group of soldiers, in baggy trousers of stained red and worn tunic of soiled blue, with a general air of having slept, unwashed, for weeks in uniform. And west of the ancient village the craggy crest of the Tête du Chien, the fortress of to-day, and east and south sea and mountain, and everywhere garden growth, foliage, and scented blossom, and the beauty of children at play and young women and handsome youths at work.