I went into the gambling rooms, and looked for the table at which the Duchess of Devonshire was staking. I knew she would attract a big crowd if she was winning.
I found the table easily enough, not because it was surrounded by a crowd of people, but because it was hidden by a dark and dense crimson fog.
With patience I got through this fog, and watched the handsome Duchess of Devonshire, formerly Duchess of Manchester, and born a Hanoverian, playing with a great quantity of gold, and a pile of thousand franc notes. By bending low down, almost level with the table, I found I got completely out of the fog, and could see clearly underneath it.
One night there was a rush outside, and a huge ring formed to watch "a scrap" taking place between two celebrated members of la haute cocotterie de Paris.
They were fighting with formidable hatpins, and I understood that the prey they fought over was Leopold, King of the Belgians.
I ran with the crowd, the gambling rooms emptied in a twinkling, for the combat took place in the Casino Square. I squeezed through the excited mob till I got behind the backers of both parties, who were holding the ring and defying the police.
It was a wonderful sight to witness the combined play of flaming red auras, shot through with vivid flashes like lightning, and blazing jewels.
The duel ended with a few scratches, much tearing of gorgeous raiment and disheveled hair.
How interesting it was to the mystic to feel the psychology of that crowd, and see the thin veneer of civilization stripped off, leaving nothing but the human tiger and ape. Both ladies were eventually led off the arena by the police, not, be it understood, to the police-station, but to their own sumptuous apartments. All the time they shrieked and chattered like infuriated macaws, and between the shrieks they administered resounding smacks upon the cheeks of their patient escort.
Monte Carlo was a wonderful place in those days, in which to study human nature at its best and worst. In latter years it has become meretricious and shabby, and the old magnificence is seen no more. Fifteen to twenty years ago all that was greatest in Europe, Asia, and the Americas, congregated there, and crowned heads mingled freely with the scum of the earth. Constant habitués were the Duchess of Devonshire, and her son, Lord Charles Montague; the Duchess of Montrose, known to the ring at Newmarket as "Bobs," and always the personification, to listen to and look at, of a Thames bargee. Leopold of Belgium, Ferdinand of Bulgaria, Grand Dukes of Russia, potentates from India, all hobnobbing together and gambling heavily.