III. The payment by the “Paris, Lyons, Méditerranée” Railway for right of passage.
IV. Our only local tax, one on all lands and houses changing hands.
The total receipts were two hundred thousand francs, or about the same as the total expense of government.
I dismissed M. de Payan; and without telling anyone where I was going I walked up to the Casino by myself.
I was little known by sight at present in the town, as those who had seen me enter it in uniform and on horseback the day before would hardly recognize me in deep mourning and on foot. I passed unnoticed by the guards, and on reaching the Casino, hot and dusty, was stopped by one of the employés of the bank, I said, “Take me to M. Blanc.”
Under similar circumstances the Prince of Wales is introduced as “Captain White,” but then he is not a sovereign prince; and I preferred to give no name at all than to assume an alias.
I found him literally “a counting out his money.” That is to say, two clerks were counting rouleaus of gold while he at a small table was quietly playing patience with two packs of cards. At a bureau was a third clerk, an Englishman, translating into French for his benefit one of Mr. Bagehot’s leaders in the Economist.
He knew me at once, although he had seen me but for a moment and in a wholly different dress. Bowing low, and speaking not to me but to his clerks, he said, “Qu’on nous laisse.” The moment they had left the room he bowed to the ground again, and said, “Ah monseigneur, votre seigneurerie me fait trop d’honneur! J’allais écrire à monsieur le chambellan pour lui demander de vouloir bien solliciter une audience en mon nom, afin de déposer mes respectueux hommages aux pieds de votre Altesse. Elle me comble en venant chez moi incognito.”
M. Blanc, whose appearance I described before, is well known to gambling Europe as a distinguished political economist, the keeper of the greatest “hell” on earth, and the loving father of a pair of pretty and accomplished daughters, living upon roulette, but himself innocent nowadays of all games but the mildest patience—of which he knows sixty kinds. At Monaco he is more than a public character: he is a benefactor and a prince. Attacks may be made upon gambling establishments even conducted as his is, but I am disposed to agree with the Jesuit fathers of the Visitation that the Monaco roulette—forbidden to the inhabitants of Monaco and of the neighbouring parts of France—does not do much harm to anyone, although I could hardly go with Père Pellico so far as to prohibit the building of a Protestant church while he tolerates a “hell,” and even permits his students to visit the musical portion of its rooms. I had no wish in my proposed reforms to reform out of existence my roulette revenue. I wished indeed to make good use of it; better use than my predecessors had done. I wanted to make of Monaco a Munich and a Dresden all in one. I would have a gallery of the greatest modern pictures—great ancient ones are not now to be obtained—a magnificent orchestra, a theatre of the first rank; art, in short, of all kind of the highest class by which to raise the culture of my people, who, excluded from the gambling side of the Casino by a wise ordinance of my predecessor, would reap the benefit without drinking the poison of the roulette.
I found M. Blanc’s mind running upon the question of whether English families would be most attracted to Monaco by pigeon-shooting or by an English church. The church he fancied most, but owing to the opposition of Père Pellico it would have to be built upon the hill a mile off from the Casino, in the territory of France.