Various ladies who organized benefits for the soldiers had sought his aid. He played for nothing, "out of patriotism", but the good ladies always found a way of giving him a fair sum. His poverty was tremendous! He was going to the gambling rooms only at long intervals. He hadn't enough money to play even the roulette wheel, where the stakes were but five francs!
The Prince started to read the titles of the scores, but Spadoni covered them up in comic haste.
"Awful rot! You mustn't look at those, your Highness. Here on the Riviera, when the ladies are getting on in years, and do not find any one to fall in love with them any more, they devote themselves to writing love songs or dance music for great spectacles; and the Casino accepts their work in order not to offend them. It results that on certain days the Monte Carlo Theater becomes the Temple of Musical Imbecility. No; it would be better for you to see what we are giving this afternoon. It is the work of a millionairess who writes the whole thing, music and words."
And he read aloud the titles of various "picturesque scenes": Dialogue between the Butterfly and the Rose, What the Palm Tree said to the Century Plant, Prayer of the Grasshopper to Our Father the Sun.
"Fortunately, your Highness, this humiliating situation will not last. I have a way out of it—a way out of it!"
And forgetting the piano, the scores, and his musical degradation, Spadoni suddenly launched into the world of dreams. He knew the secret of the great man, the Greek, who was winning millions at the Sporting-Club. He had guessed it, with his own cunning, after worming certain data out of a man who accompanied the lofty personage. It was a simple combination, like all ideas of genius. For example....
And he reached for a pack of cards which was on the table, lying on a number of albums bound in red: The nine Symphonies of Beethoven.
"Oh no—if you please!" the Prince brusquely restrained him, to keep him from plunging into that mania for demonstrating.
"I hoped to meet Castro here," he said, in a quiet voice, a moment later.
Spadoni seemed to awaken.