Michael shrugged his shoulders, as though the matter were something of no interest to him.
"Tell him I don't want to sell. No—it would be better still not to reply at all. We shall see later on; I shall think it over."
On getting out of the street car in Monte Carlo he passed to the right of the Casino, and followed the upper Boulevards. First he was going in quest of Spadoni, who lived nearest. Besides, the latter would surely know better than Novoa where Atilio was staying. Perhaps they were living together.
He had a vague idea of the house, through Castro's joking. The pianist was "the guardian of the tomb" above the Sainte Dévote ravine.
From the summit of a bridge the Prince saw this ravine at his feet. Its sides were covered with gardens, luxurious villas and hotels, and at its outlet stretched the smiling harbor of La Condamine.
Sixty years before, the ravine had been a wild spot. It was visited only by religious processions coming from the walled City of Monaco to pay homage to Sainte Dévote in a little white church, which to-day seemed still more diminutive beside the arches of the railway bridge.
In the earliest times of Christianity, a bark without oars or sail, guided by the will of God, who had deigned to grant a patron saint to the inhabitants of "Hercules Harbor," had grounded keel on those shores.
The bark contained the miracle working body of a Corsican Christian martyrized by the Romans. Nobody knew her name, and popular devotion called her simply the Sainte Dévote. Once a year, at nightfall, on her feast day, a large crowd from the Casino left roulette and trente et quarante to watch the sailors of Monaco, to the sound of music, burn an old bark in front of the church, thus cutting off all means of retreat to the Holy Patroness.
The stony fields, once planted with prickly pear and olive trees, were now covered with palaces, as large as barracks. They supported a second lofty city, above, which stretched away along the slopes of the Alps, and united Monaco with Monte Carlo. The land here, now sold at fabulous prices, was a spot so neglected half a century before that any of its owners might arrange without interference to be buried on his own property.
An obscure officer in Napoleon's Army, born in Monaco, and who had succeeded in becoming a General in the days of Louis Philippe, had had his tomb built in an olive grove above the Sainte Dévote ravine. Later gambling had made Monte Carlo rise above the wild plateau of the Caverns; the elegant, new city was spreading out to join old Monaco, covering all the land of the principality with buildings, and the tomb of the unknown warrior was imprisoned by this wave of great hotels, palaces, and villas. The olive grove around the tomb was sold by the yard, making a fortune for the soldier's heirs. Between the sepulchre and the edge of the ravine there remained a level space, from which one could enjoy a view of the splendid panorama. A millionaire from Paris had been bold enough to construct over the spot a house in "artistic" style, with gardens descending in terraces. He had imagined it would be an easy matter to have the General transferred to the cemetery and the mortuary chapel demolished. But the dead man was on his own land, and could not come to life to cancel the arrangements he had made in his will with so little prescience of the extraordinary growth old Monaco was to make; as a result there was no power on earth that could demolish his last dwelling place.