When the paving stones resounded with human footsteps, the shutters all opened half way. A carriage caused many heads to appear at the windows. The few passersby were often canons from the cathedral, Barefoot Brothers with a crown of hair about their shaven scalps, or nuns with huge starched butterflies on their heads.
Only a little door separated the old city from the other situated on the heights opposite, with its Casino, its hotels, its orchestras, and its wealthy pleasure-loving crowd. A short ride by street car was sufficient to give one the illusion of having suddenly slipped back two centuries. Lubimoff recalled the expressions of surprise awakened in people by several of these barefoot brothers crossing the Casino Square on their way down to Monte Carlo.
He passed under a covered archway that joined two houses. A large open space, like a plain, opened in front of him. It was the Palace Square. Opposite it rose the lordly dwelling of the Grimaldi, a jumble of buildings dating back to different periods, which recalled the palaces of certain sovereign princes in ancient Italy. It was of a dark rose color, cut by the Archway of the Loggias, and was flanked by towers of white stone surmounted by battlements. He knew this edifice likewise. It was a mere show-place, and quite uninhabited, since the Prince, during his short visits to his domains, preferred to live on board his yacht.
The first thing that attracted his attention was the guard. The soldiers of Monaco, old French gendarmes, had gone to the war, and a national militia was taking the place of the Prince's army. It was composed of actual citizens of the "Rock," where citizens must be descendants of at least four generations resident in Monaco. They alone could contribute to the ideal defense of the principality, since they enjoyed the advantages of belonging to a country, unique in the world, where all who were born there, had bread and work assured them, thanks to the Casino.
Lubimoff admired the warlike guard, an old man with a white mustache, and stooping, almost humped, shoulders, dressed in a dark tan overcoat and a derby hat. A red and white arm band was his entire uniform. On his shoulder he carried an ancient gun which because of its tremendously long bayonet seemed even more enormous and heavy than it was. He might have rested beside a sentry box, painted with the Monaco colors; but he preferred to pace incessantly up and down, like a squirrel in a cage, looking in every direction to see if any one were trying to enter the palace of the absent sovereign. Other men who were fathers and even grandfathers, dressed in their Sunday clothes, were patiently waiting on a bench for their turn to exercise the honorable function.
The most notable thing on this esplanade was the artillery, a collection of XVIII century cannon placed there as an ornament, like the panoplies of a drawing room. On both sides of the entrance to the palace six huge, magnificent cannon, cast in green statue bronze, and chiseled like museum pieces, were drawn up in a row. Around their mouths, the metal curved backward forming a leafy design like that of a capital on a column; the other end was surmounted by a Medusa's head. The barrels of these hollow columns were ornamented with the three fleurs de lis of the ancient French Monarchy; the handles on each cannon were two dolphins, and all the pieces displayed the pretentious motto: Nec pluribus impar of Louis XIV, with another more somber one: Ultima ratio regum.
The Prince smiled at the latter motto.
"These days, artillery," he said to himself, "is no longer 'the last argument of kings', but it is of peoples. We have progressed somewhat."
Each of these green cannon had its own name, just as a ship or a regiment. One was named Nero, another Tiberius; farther on Robust and the Snorer opened their round mouths.
On the parapets enclosing the large square on both sides, other more modest, but equally huge and ancient cannon, thrust their mouths out upon the harbor or the open sea. The solid balls of these cannon formed pyramids, and parasitical vegetation had crept in between these iron spheres.