Compared with the old towns around it Monte Carlo is so new, so fresh, so bright that it may be the city of youth, an embodiment of youth itself, of careless, reckless, sensuous youth. It is so young that there is not a wrinkle on its face, although the cheek may be a trifle tinted and the lips unduly red. Its streets recall the gaiety of youth, its lavish gardens proclaim the indulgence and the luxury of youth, its crags and ravines the spirit of adventure, its clear sky the far vision of youth and its blazing sun the fierce passion of youth.
The gorgeous white Casino would seem to realise, in such a city, the fantasy of youth. It is so immense, so impossible, so unlike any conception of sober middle age, so unreal, so daring. It conforms to the type of no ordinary building. Its architecture is not of this world of common things, although it may possibly approach that of the exuberant temple in white on the top of a wedding cake.
The Casino, in its extravagance, is indeed just such a castle in the air as a young man would build, a fabric of his dream, his palace of delight. The very town tingles with life, with excitement, with restlessness, with the playfulness of everything. It is a butterfly town, for it lives only for a few gay months. The air is laden with the scent of flowers, while the honeymoon wind lies asleep on the heaving bosom of the deep.
Moreover it is a town of the south, of the warm, indolent south, where, as Sancho Panza would say, there is—whatever happens—“still sun on the wall.” Here in the south, as compared with the north, the seasons are reversed. The winter is the time for pleasure; the summer for rest, for seclusion within shut doors and, it may be, for forgetfulness of things.
The winter in the north is symbolic of the closing days of life and of the weariness of old age; for the world has then become cold, dark and cheerless, as well as indifferent and possibly unkind. The summer in the south is, in its turn, the symbol of the end of the pageant of youth. The gardens are faded and parched up, the flowers are withered and dead, the grass is a waste of arid brown, the fountains are dry and the very earth is cracked with thirst. The world, spent and panting, has sunk into a drugged sleep like a man exhausted by a fever. The days of riotous living have come to an end; passion has burnt itself out; the rivers of pleasure are now beds of stone and the Dead Sea apple is the only fruit left on the tree.
MONTE CARLO FROM MONACO.
As the southern winter begins again the freshly-sown grass springs up; the lawns become green; the buds open; the roses, the heliotrope, the geraniums and the mimosa break into flower and the world is as gay as the sun and a caressing wind can make it.
It is then a tempting time to think of the drab, mist-shrouded island of England with its sodden fields and the rain dripping from the thatch, of London, of those sad houses and those awful streets, of the slush-covered roads, of the muffled faces and the blue hands, of the hours of semi-darkness, of the sun that is seen as a red disc in a fog.
Because Monte Carlo, as a town, appears to be symbolic of all that is young it must not be assumed that its inhabitants have acquired eternal youth. Many attempt it, many struggle to attain it with an eagerness which is pathetic and pitiable. They are like gaily-dressed ghosts, a little stiff in movement, following a figure that dances before them like a faun. There is a butterfly called “The Painted Lady” and perhaps it will suffice to say that the existence of this fluttering thing will come often to the minds of those who stroll along the Terrace in the sun.
Apart from its suggestion of youthfulness Monte Carlo is a town full of remarkable contrasts as extreme as the black shadow of a cypress on a marble wall. On one side of the haven, with its chapel to Ste. Dévote, rises the great rock of Monaco. On its summit stand the palace, the fortress and the little town—all three so staid, so grey, so very, very old—just as they have stood in company through some six hundred years. On the other side of the chapel, on rising ground, lies Monte Carlo, modern in every fibre of its being, a town that has sprung up in a night like a gaudily-tinted fungus, a brilliant, vivid place, slashed with colour like a jester’s coat, as ephemeral as a rainbow, since any change in the public taste may cause it to fade into nothingness.
On the crest of the hill above Monte Carlo there stands, against the skyline, the massive monument in stone set up by the Emperor Augustus to mark the victory of Rome over a horde of savages; while below, by the edge of the sea, are the pinnacles of the Casino, a monument in papier maché to mark the subjection of a cultured folk to the mastery of a passion.
Climbing the mountain behind the town is still the ancient road that, more than two thousand years ago, led from the Roman forum into Gaul; while, by the water’s edge, on the other hand, are the railway, the motor track and a hydroplane that has just flown over from Corsica.
All around Monte Carlo, from the east to the west, are the cave-dwellings of prehistoric men, a brutish people clad in wolf skins; while in the town itself are hotels of unparalleled luxury and, on the Terrace, a company of pampered men and women decked in all the “purple and fine linen” that the world can provide.
Still more curious is it that the great modern forts of Mont Agel and the Tête de Chien actually look down upon a line of fortified camps and stone strongholds built by the Ligurians before the dawn of history.
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The name Monte Carlo is derived from Prince Charles III. of Monaco.