We arrived towards evening at Barcelona and put up for the night at the “Hôtel des quatre Nations,” situated on the “Rambla,” the finest and gayest street of Barcelona. This town can easily rival Madrid. The streets are broad and beautifully lighted with electricity and the shops are splendid.
Feeling too tired to appear at table-d’hôte, I went immediately to bed, whilst Sergy made gastronomic purchases at the nearest grocery-shop. He came home laden with parcels, having converted himself into a temporary hanging-stand; from every part of him suspended a loose parcel containing butter, cheese, sausages, etc., and under his arm he brought bravely a bottle of Malaga wine, which he added to his stock in order not to be taken by the shopman for a famished wretch.
Early in the morning we continued our journey to Nice. The country is not picturesque, and the roads are very rough and badly kept. Towards sunset we approached the French frontier Portou-Cerbère and soon perceived a corner of the Mediterranean, lighted by a silver moon. It was very cold in our compartment, and the foot-warmers had to be changed several times during the night. We did not stop at Marseilles and went straight on to Nice, having decided to spend a few days on the Riviera. There were two Frenchmen in our compartment going to gamble at Monte Carlo, who studied systems on a little roulette board. One of them descended at a station to buy a newspaper, whilst his friend slept on peacefully, nodding his head, in a corner of the carriage, and didn’t come back when the train had started. I was watching wickedly the awakening of our fellow-passenger, to see the expression of his face when he would find out that his friend was not there. Suddenly waking out of his nap he opened his eyes very wide and fixed them upon us suspiciously. Did he think perhaps that we had pitched his companion out of the window? At the next stoppage both friends were reunited. The belated passenger, as it appears, had just time to jump in the next carriage when the train was moving.
CHAPTER XLV
SAN REMO
We only remained ten days at Nice, for we were at the end of October, the season of gusty winds and showers. The weather was abominable, and we had to remain indoors all day. So we started for San Remo, where my husband’s brother had settled with his family for the whole winter. The “Villa Maria,” which they were to inhabit, was not ready yet to receive them, and they had to put up in the meanwhile at the “Quisisana,” a boarding-house kept by an old German lady. The society offered by the few tenants of the “Quisisana” was not of a specially enlivening description. There was an English spinster lady on whom wooers had turned their backs long ago, dried up in celibacy, who never was kissed, I am sure, for with such a thin body you might get a bruise in coming in contact with her. She was a blue-stocking in the bargain, and read Homer in Greek; a crushingly superior person who made other people feel ignorant. I was becoming intolerably tired of her superior culture and stopped her every time she began any long sentences. There was another British lady, who was a very different sort of person, her tongue being the only sharp thing in her whole stout person. What she lacked in height was amply made up in width: whichever way you put her down she’d roll. After dinner she regaled us with songs which she cooed raising her eyes to the ceiling, at which I had to make the greatest effort to keep serious. She was awfully sentimental, and when she turned her eyes upon me with so melting an expression that I thought she was going to kiss me, I precipitately fled. The third boarder was a consumptive German student, frightfully pale and thin, who, notwithstanding his malady, manifested an immoderate love for the flute, and practised it assiduously to the great annoyance of his neighbours.
San Remo is not very gay. The only distraction you get is to walk around a music-kiosque in the public garden, in the company of nursery maids wheeling perambulators in front of them. At nine o’clock of the evening the music stops, the shops are closed, and everybody goes to bed.
One morning we took a carriage and went over to Monte Carlo, situated at some hours’ distance from San Remo. We followed all the time the beautiful Corniche road, cut out in the rock. Our driver, who made the journey for the first time, did not know that he had to take a pass, and was not allowed to go further. It is lucky that we found a carriage on the Italian side of the frontier, at Ventimiglia, which brought us to Mentone, where we took the train to Monaco. Here a new disappointment awaited us! We were too late for the train and had to wait hours for the next one. To shorten the time, we went for a stroll through Mentone, and entered the first hotel to have lunch, but it was not mealtime at the hotel, and we returned fagged out and ravenous to the railway station.
All Monte Carlo seemed composed of gardens, with the big, white building of the Casino in the midst, the whole ringed in by high grey mountains. We went straight to the Casino and looked in at the gambling-rooms. The tables were surrounded by anxious players with a preponderance of courtesans of high and low degree, with painted faces and rings down to their nails, who followed the game with breathless interest. An old woman, dressed in dyed silks and a home-made hat, was losing heavily, and staked her last francs with despair written on her face. Many players come to Monaco with their pockets full, and have nothing to pay their return journey. Suicides often take place here. I tried my luck, and lost something like ten francs.
The Principality of Monaco is quite a small one. It would take half an hour to walk over the island, from one end to the other. The reigning Prince has a diminutive army of sixty regular soldiers, two officers and three constables, and that’s all! Sergy asked one of the constables who was on duty at the railway station, how their army could manage without any cavalry, and he answered that they wouldn’t have known what to do with it, for it would take more time to saddle a horse than to walk around their whole territory!