CHAPTER III.
‘This room is stifling, it is so small; and yet there are horrible draughts in it. I dare say the ridiculous walls are not an inch thick,’ said the Princess Napraxine now, as she rose from the breakfast-table, and drew her delicate skirts, with their undulating waves and foam of lace, out through the glass doors and over the marble of the terrace to the sheltered nook in which she had been sitting before breakfast, where a square Smyrna carpet was placed under several cushioned lounging-chairs. It was only two o’clock, and the air was warm and full of brilliant sunshine.
‘It is all in dreadful taste,’ she said for the hundredth time. ‘This sort of mock-Syrian scenery, mixed up with châlets, villas, and hotels, has such a look of the stage. It seems made on purpose for maquillées beauties, dyed and pampered gamblers, and great ladies who are received nowhere else. Places have all a physiognomy, moral as well as physical. The Riviera must have been enchanting when there was only a mule-track as wide as a ribbon between the hills and the sea from Marseilles to Genoa, but now that the moral emanations of Monte Carlo and of the cinq heures at all the nondescript houses, and of the baccarat groups in the clubs which are not as exclusive as they might be, have spread all along the coast like miasma, the whole thing is only a décor de scène, the very gardens are masquerading as Egypt, as Damascus, as Palermo. It is all postiche.’
‘You are very cruel, madame,’ murmured Melville.
‘That is the only thing you can any of you find to reply when I say anything that is true!’ said the Princess, with triumph.
‘The de Vannes are your nearest neighbours,’ suggested her husband.
‘Did you mean that Cri-Cri is bien nature?’ she said, with her little low laugh. ‘I fear neither of them will contribute anything to redeem the character of the place for either maquillage or gambling——’
‘Why would you come to it?’ he asked, with all a man’s stupidity.