The road from Antibes to Nice is straight and flat, and there were advertising signs and a big racetrack, many motorcars, and in those days still a few carriages. When you pass Nice you travel on one of three roads, called corniches, which means “shelves”; if you wanted scenery you chose the highest shelf, and if you wanted to get there you chose the lowest, but in either case you kept tooting your horn, for no matter how carefully you made the turns, you could never tell what lunatic might come whirling around the next one.
Monaco is a tiny province with a ruler of its own. The “Prince” of those days was interested in oceanography, and had constructed a great aquarium; but this wasn't such a novelty to Lanny, who had learned to expel the air from his lungs and sink down to where the fishes live. “Monte,” as the smart people call it, is a small town on a flat rocky height which juts out into the sea. There are terraces below it, carved out of the rock, and you can look over the water from your hotel windows; down below you hear incessant shooting, for next to playing roulette and baccarat, the favorite amusement of the visitors is killing pigeons. The tender-minded comfort themselves with the thought that somebody eats those that fall, and presumably the hawks end the troubles of those that fly away wounded.
Lanny had been here before, and there was nothing new to him in a street of fashionable shops and hotels. They went to the most expensive of the latter, and Robbie engaged a suite, and sent up his card to the Turkish dignitary, whose secretary came and requested in polished French that “M. Bood” would be so kind as to return in an hour, as the pasha was “in conference.” Robbie said, certainly, and they went out to stroll in the beautiful gardens of the Casino, which- have walks lined with palm trees and flowering shrubs. There was a little circle of flower beds, and as they came to it, Robbie said, in a low voice: “Here he comes.”
“Who?” whispered Lanny; and the answer was: “The man we talked about in the boat.”
The boy's heart gave a jump. He looked and saw a tall, gray-haired gentleman turning onto the other side of the circle. He paid no attention to them, so Lanny could take a good look.
Basil Zaharoff had been a vigorous man in his youth, but had grown heavy. He wore the garment of an Englishman on formal occasions, which is called a frock coat, cut large as if to hide his central bulk, and hanging down in back all the way to his knees; a smooth, black, and very ugly garment supposed to confer dignity upon its wearer. Added to it were striped trousers, shoes with spats, and on his head a tall cylinder of smooth black silk. The munitions king had a gray mustache and what was called an “imperial,” a tuft of hair starting from the front of his chin, and hanging down three or four inches below it. He walked with a cane, stooping slightly, which made his hooked nose the most prominent thing about him and gave the odd impression that he was smelling his way.
“Having his constitutional,” said Robbie, after Zaharoff had passed. Lanny took a rear view of the man who was worth so many millions, and had got them by having other men's papers stolen. “He comes here often,” explained the father. “He stays at the hotel with his duquesa.”
“He is married?” asked the boy, and Robbie told the strange story of this master of Europe who could not buy the one thing he most wanted.
Some twenty-five years ago, when the ex-fireman had got well under way as a salesman of munitions, he went to Spain on a deal, and met a seventeen-year-old duchess of that realm, owning almost as many names as Zaharoff now owned companies. Robbie, who liked to make fun of the pretensions of Europe, said that the only case he had ever heard of a person having more names was a runaway slave whom his great-uncle had rescued by way of the “underground railroad.” The Spanish lady was Maria del Pilar Antonia Angela Patrocino Simon de Muguiro y Berute, Duquesa de Mar-queni y Villafranca de los Caballeros. Legend had it that Zaharoff had met her on a sleeping car, by rescuing her from the cruelties of her husband on her wedding night. However that may be, it was certain that the husband had become violently insane, and was confined in a cell, and for twenty-five years Zaharoff and the lady had been living together, but couldn't marry because the Catholic Church, of which she was a devout member, does not permit divorce. It was usually possible to persuade the Church authorities to annul a marriage on some pretext, but it would have been embarrassing in this case, for the reason that the mad duke happened to be a cousin of King Alfonso.
The couple were devoted to each other, and Robbie said that might be one of the reasons for the business success of the ex-fireman; he was proof against traps which men bait for one another with women. The former peasant boy naturally felt honored to have the love of a duquesa, and she helped him to meet the right people. “Like you and Beauty!” remarked Lanny.