A Book of The Riviera

The Catalans brought up three round tubs of vessels called coques against the right wing of Grimaldi, and sank as many of his galleys. Alarmed at this, he unlinked eleven of his vessels and rallied them to the eight of the reserve, and, without striking another blow, fled, and left the rest of the fleet a prey to the enemy. All the thirty vessels thus abandoned by the cowardly admiral were obliged to surrender.

In that day the Genoese lost 3,000 men killed, and 3,500 taken prisoners. The Republic had never before suffered such a disaster. Despair took possession of government and people, and they abdicated their independence and proclaimed John Visconti, Duke of Milan, as Lord of Genoa. Lucien (1506-14) murdered his brother John, so as to obtain the principality for himself – at least, so it was surmised, and Lucien was obliged to fly from Monaco on that account, and conceal himself, till Duke Charles of Savoy gave him an indult, forbidding all inquiry to be made into the matter of the crime, and search after the murderer. Then Lucien stole back to Monaco and assumed the sovereignty. His sister Francesca had married Lucas Doria, and when left a widow, by her will constituted her brothers Lucien and Augustine, who was bishop of Grasse, guardians of her children. After her death her son Bartholomew Doria complained bitterly that his uncle Lucien Grimaldi kept hold of the inheritance and would not surrender it. At last, resentment induced him to resolve on revenging himself on Lucien, for the wrong done to himself, and for the murder of his uncle John. He secured the promise of co-operation, if required, of the famous admiral, Andrew Doria, and he sent to Monaco some confederates, with a request to Lucien to let them be lodged there in safety, as they had got into a broil at Genoa. He also intimated his intention to follow shortly and halt at Monaco on his way to Lyons, where he hoped to have an interview with the King of France, and to obtain from him a charge in his army.

When Bartholomew arrived at Monaco, Lucien invited him to breakfast and gave to his nephew the place of honour at the table. Bartholomew could not eat, and when pressed to do so by his uncle complained that he had lost his appetite. Lucien then placed one of his children on Doria’s knee; but the young man trembled so that the child had to be taken from him. On rising from table Bartholomew asked the prince to give him some instructions as to his course.

At this time Andrew Doria’s fleet put into the harbour of Monaco, and the admiral sent to Bartholomew a laconic epistle, “What thou hast to do, do quickly.” Lucien bade his nephew accompany him into a cabinet at the end of the gallery. As the prince entered, the major-domo came up and informed him that Andrew Doria’s galleys had arrived in the port, and handed to Bartholomew the sealed letter bidding him be speedy in executing what he had undertaken.

When the major-domo withdrew, none were in the cabinet save the prince, who seated himself, a black slave, and Bartholomew, who stood by the window. All at once the tramp of feet sounded in the gallery, and an assassin rushed in, followed by others holding daggers and shouting, “Ammaza! kill! kill!” In a few minutes Lucien was despatched, and then the murderers, surrounding Bartholomew, marched forth, descended to the port, and were received on board the galley of Andrew Doria.

Hercules I. (1589-1604) met with a violent death from some of his own subjects. He used his sovereign power to get possession of and outrage the wives and daughters of his subjects. At last some, whose wives had been dishonoured by him, conspired, took him and flung him over the rocks into the sea.

Louis (1662-1701), Prince of Monaco, became enamoured of the celebrated Hortense Mancini, Duchess of Mazarin, exiled from France for her intrigues. He followed her to Rome, and thence to London, where he and Charles II. were rivals for her favour. Saint Evremond did all in his power to separate her from the prince and constitute her a prime favourite of the King, in place of the Duchess of Portsmouth. A rivalry in prodigality ensued between little Monaco and the King of Great Britain. It was the fable of the frog and the ox enacted. In an access of jealousy Charles withdrew a pension of £4,000 he had accorded to the duchess, whereupon Louis sent her an order for that same amount, payable for life out of his treasury, accompanying it with a copy of verses. That the money was paid regularly is more than doubtful.

This Louis was married to Charlotte de Gramont, who was one of “les grandes amoureuses” of the reign of Louis XIV. She intrigued with the king. She entertained a passion for her ambitious cousin de Lauzun. Her many love adventures furnished Saint Simon with a good deal of not very edifying matter for his Mémoires. Whilst Charlotte revelled in Paris, Louis sulked at Monaco. As news reached him of Charlotte having made a fresh conquest, he had a gibbet erected on the confines of his tiny principality, and the happy man in effigy hung from it; and as Charlotte’s caprices and conquests were numerous, the frontier of Monaco was soon marked out at intervals by a score of gallows, from which dangled dummy men, all dressed in Court costume.

“Not merely,” says Mme. de Sévigné, “is this measure retrospective, but folk amuse themselves by informing the prince of what is now going on. The consequence is that the gibbets have to be put closer together, and more than half of the courtiers are now dangling in effigy along the frontiers of Monaco. I can assure you that I have had many a laugh over this, and others as well. The king himself laughs at it. This frenzy of hangings passes all belief.”

At the beginning of the seventeenth century, the Spaniards had profited by the minority of Honoré II. to put a garrison into Monaco, under the pretext of alliance. Speedily they took advantage of this to behave as masters of the place. Prince Honoré, to escape from their domination, signed a secret treaty with Louis XIII. in 1641, by virtue of which his sovereign independence was guaranteed and a garrison of 500 French soldiers was assured him after the expulsion of the Spaniards. But it was precisely this last thing that was most difficult to achieve. Honoré succeeded by subtlety. He ordered the arrest of thirty of the inhabitants of Monaco, lusty men, and cast them into prison; then invited the Spanish garrison to a grand banquet at the palace, and made them as drunk as fiddlers. When they were almost incapable of defence, he opened the prison, told the men he had locked up that they were to massacre the Spanish garrison, and put daggers into their hands. The Spaniards, however, were not so drunk that they could not defend their lives; they were, however, nearly all slaughtered; and the gates were thrown open to some French soldiers who had been waiting at Antibes to replace the Spaniards. This took place in November, 1641. In consequence of this, all the estates of Honoré in Italy were confiscated, but Louis XIII. indemnified Honoré for this by granting to him the Seigneurie of Les Baux in Provence and the Duchy of Valentinois.

Antoine, who died in 1731, was the last direct male of the house. He left a daughter, Louise Hippolyte, who married Jacques François de Matignon, Comte de Torrigny. She survived her father but eleven months. Her son Honoré III. (1731-1795) lived at the time of the outbreak of the French Revolution. The new ideas excited effervescence in little Monaco, Roquebrune, and Mentone, which belonged at the time to the principality, and they demanded elective councils. Honoré was compelled to yield, whereupon the Councils suppressed all feudal rights. Then, when he was frightened and ran away, the three towns declared the House of Grimaldi deposed. Nice had been united to France, and Monaco demanded the same favour, which was granted February 14th, 1793. Honoré was arrested on September 28th, in the same year, and detained till Thermidor 9th. He died in 1795. By the treaty of Paris, 1814, Monaco was restored to Honoré IV., his son, but on the return of Napoleon from Elba, the principality was occupied by an English force. By the treaty of November 20th, 1815, it was transferred to Sardinia; but this lasted only till 1816, when Honoré V. regained his principality. His son Florestan I. (1841-56) abolished monopoly in bread, allowed free trade, and founded a college at Mentone. The revolution of 1848 was disastrous to the Prince. Mentone and Roquebrune severed their connexion with Monaco and were annexed to Sardinia. Charles III. (1856-89) succeeded his father, Florestan. He it was who conceived the idea of repairing his losses by the establishment of gaming tables at Monaco.

The princes had coined gold, silver, and copper money from 1505, with the legend, “Christus regnat, Christus imperat, Christus vincit.” This legend became inappropriate thenceforth, in Monaco.

In 1856 Charles III. started the gambling tables in a building adjoining the palace, afterwards occupied by the guard of honour. But the venture was not a success. Monaco was out of the way, hardly accessible from the land, where the Corniche Road ran high above, on the summit of the cliffs by La Turbie, so that it could be reached conveniently only by sea.

The gambling concession passed through various hands, till, owing to the closing of the Casino at Homburg, M. Blanc thought of Monaco. In 1863 he went there, on March 31st, entered the bureau of the then concessioners, Lefebre and Co., and said, “You want to sell this affair; I am disposed to take it. Reflect. I shall return here at 3.30 p.m. I leave at 4 p.m. by the steamboat, and I want to have this matter settled before I go back to Nice.” The company sold it to Blanc for 1,700,000 francs.

On April 1st, All Fools’ Day, 1863, Blanc formed La Société anonyme des Bains de Mer et Cercle des Étrangers à Monaco, for fifty years, with a capital of fifteen millions, represented by 30,000 shares of 500 francs each. One of the first to take shares in this gambling society was Pope Leo XIII., at the time only cardinal. Blanc was a little man, with moustache already white, aged fifty-seven, when he came to feather his nest, and that of the Prince of Monaco, at Monte Carlo. He married his daughter to Prince Roland Bonaparte, grandson of Lucien, Prince of Caninio, the brother of the Emperor Napoleon I.

Blanc died in 1881. In 1882 it was resolved to double the capital of this “bathing establishment.” The fifteen million was raised to thirty million, divided up into 60,000 shares of 500 francs each, Blanc’s heirs retaining about 52,000 shares in their own hands. As the original concession was for fifty years, and would expire in 1913, it was deemed advisable to approach the Prince of Monaco for an extension, and this was granted, as the shareholders complained, “on very hard terms.” It was signed on January 16th, 1898, and by this agreement the company received a fresh concession for fifty years.

So profitable an affair is this Circle des Étrangers and Société des Bains de Mer, that the ordinary 500-franc shares rose at once to 4,770 francs.

An old Italian proverb was to this effect:

Monaco io sono
Un scoglio.
Del mio non ho
Quello d’altrui non taglio
Pur viver voglio.

That may be rendered, “I am Monaco, a mere rock; I have naught of my own, I take no goods of others; yet I must live.”

This proverb is now as inappropriate as the legend on the coins; for Monaco lives and thrives on the plunder of those who go there to empty their money on the tables.

Les Spélunges, a rocky promontory, full of holes and cracks, like a petrified sponge, on which formerly shepherds pastured their goats, has become the world-famed Monte Carlo; and La Condamine, once the flower-garden that supplied the House of Rimmel with perfumes, is now occupied by houses of those who live more or less directly on the tables. Charles III., who made the concession, has not left a very savoury recollection behind him. Whilst his father was reigning prince, he tired of being only heir apparent, and stirred up a revolt against his father; but the National Guard arrested him, and he was conducted to Genoa, where he was set at liberty.

His son, Albert Honoré Charles, the present Prince, married Lady Mary Victoria, daughter of the Duke of Hamilton and Brandon, on September 21st, 1869, and by her had a son, born in 1870.

But they apparently got tired of each other, for the Pope was approached by Lady Mary, with the full consent of the Prince, to get the marriage annulled.

Now the Church of Rome holds very strict views as to the indissoluble nature of marriage. Even the successor of S. Peter protests his inability to pronounce a divorce. But, he can annul a marriage on various grounds; and to help this out, all sorts of bars to legitimate marriage have been devised, as consanguinity within seven degrees of relationship, affinity, spiritual relationship through sponsorship at the font, or legal relationship through guardianship, beside many others, by means of some of which, with a little greasing of palms, hardly a legitimate union cannot be annulled. Accordingly, on January 3rd, 1880, after eleven years of married life, the Pope declared the marriage to have been void, on the plea put forward by Lady Mary that she had been over-persuaded to marry the Prince, by her mother. But the Papal Court laid down that although the connexion had been one of mere concubinage, yet, nevertheless, the son was to be regarded as legitimate. “Which is the humour of it,” as Corporal Nym would say. It further ordered that the re-marriage of either party must take place where the State did not require civil marriage, as civil courts considered the first marriage as valid. “Which,” again as Nym would say, “is the humour of it.”

Eleven months after this decree Lady Mary Hamilton married Count Tassilo Festitics, at Pesth; and the Prince married, October 30th, 1889, Alice, dowager duchess of Richelieu, a Heine of New Orleans. The name is Jewish.

The Pope seems to have felt that his proceeding in this matter had made the sensitive consciences of Roman Catholics wince, for he shortly after issued an Encyclical on Marriage, and pointed out what were the pleas on which the Papal Court was justified in dissolving existing marriages. The Tablet also, on March 31st, 1894, published an apologetic article, in which it assured the world that the official fees paid to the Propaganda for annulling a marriage were trifling, that, in a word, a marriage could be dissolved at Rome, dirt-cheap, for £120. More shame to it, if true. But “Credat Judæus Apelles non ego.”

This Court, as we know, will allow, for a handsome consideration, an uncle to marry his niece, whereas formally it forbids an union within the seven degrees.

High aloft, towering above Monaco, 1,270 feet from the sea-level, accessible by a cog-railway, is La Turbie, the point where the old Roman Via Aurelia and the modern Corniche Road cross a neck that is the natural division between France and Italy; the point where, in Roman times before the Empire, Gaul ended, and Italy began.

La Turbie is a corruption of Tropaïa – the Trophy, for here stood the monument erected by Augustus about the year B.C. 13, commemorative of his victories over the Ligurian natives of the coast. For some seventeen years the empire had existed. All exterior marks of flattery and submission had been accorded to him. To him had already been given an official worship, as if he were a god. Even that “white soul” Virgil thus speaks of the living emperor: – “A god has vouchsafed us this tranquillity; for to me he (Augustus) shall always be a god. A tender lamb from our folds shall often dye his altar with its blood.”

Ancient writers have left us no description of the monument. Pliny records the inscription it bore in seventy-eight words, of which thirty-three were devoted to the official dedication to the divine Augustus and to record his dignities, and forty-five to the enumeration of the conquered peoples.

The monument has gone through a period of sad wreckage. The Genoese pillaged it of marbles wherewith to decorate the palaces of the citizen nobles; and in the period of the furious struggles between Guelfs and Ghibellines it was converted into a fortress. It now presents a substructure of the period of Augustus, above which rises the shattered fragment of a mediæval tower.

Before the year 1869 only fourteen letters of the inscription had been recovered. Since then five more have been found, which had been built into a wall surrounding the village. From a description of the monument as it existed in the sixteenth century, before it was such a complete wreck as it is at present, written by a Franciscan, Antonio Boyer, of Nice, it had a square basement about twenty-four feet high, above which rose a circular structure sixty feet high, divided into two stages, with marble columns ranging one above another. Between these columns were niches once adorned with statues, and the whole was capped by a cupola surmounted, probably by a statue of Victory, or of Augustus. In the basement were two doors, and above the north door was the tablet inscribed with the dedication to Augustus. The upper portion, converted into a tower in the Middle Ages, was destroyed in 1705 by order of Louis XIV. Mines of gunpowder were exploded under it.

The church, erected in 1777, and the houses of La Turbie are built out of the stones pillaged from this monument. In the church is a copy of the S. Michael of Raphael, given by the Musée S. Germain in exchange for a statue and the fragments of the inscription, from the Trophy of Augustus.[16 - A fine head, dug out from the ruins, and supposed to be that of Drusus, is now in the Copenhagen museum.] It is worth while to sit on the rock and look at this ruin – the ruin of an immense monument set up to honour a mortal deified, and to whom sacrifices were offered, who gathered into his own hands all the authority and power of the known world for his own selfish glorification – and think, that at the same time He was born who made Himself of no reputation and took on Him the form of a servant, and was made in the likeness of man – who humbled Himself and became obedient unto death, even the death of the cross. The Trophy of Augustus is a heap of ruins, but the Catholic Church, the trophy of Him who was born under Cæsar Augustus, is everywhere, and imperishable.

Sitting on the honeycombed limestone rock, looking on that wreckage, and hearing the bells of all the church towers for miles around break out in musical call to the Angelus, this thought rises and fills the mind: Selfishness has but its day; self-sacrifice establishes an everlasting reign.

Monte Carlo occupies, as already said, a limestone headland, forming the horn of the bay opposite Monaco, but not projecting to anything like its extent into the sea. Between the two is the ravine through which a little stream decants into the harbour. Here is the Church of Ste. Devota.

Devota was a girl brought up from childhood in the Christian faith. When she was quite young she was taken into the house of Eutyches, a senator, and probably a relation. Eutyches was not a Christian, but he was a kindly disposed man, and loathed the idea of persecution. On the publication of the edict of Diocletian in 303 against Christians, he sacrificed along with other senators; but the governor of Corsica, where he lived, hearing that he harboured in his house a little Christian maiden, had her brought forth and ordered that she should be executed. Her feet were tied together, and she was dragged over rough ground till she was cut and bruised through her entire body. Then she was stretched on the rack, and expired. According to the legend, as she died a white dove was seen fluttering over her; it expanded its pure wings, and, soaring, was lost in the deep blue of the sky. The following night a priest rescued the body, placed spices about it, laid it in a boat, and bade a boatman named Gratian carry it away. Then the white dove appeared again, skimming over the water; and so Gratian, following the bird, rowed till he reached Monaco, and there the body was laid. Her festival is on January 27th, and on that day a procession leaves the cathedral at Monaco and descends to the Church of Ste. Devota in the gulley.

The great charm of Monte Carlo consists in the gardens with tropical plants. As to the buildings of Casino and Theatre, they are by Charles Garnier, who was also the architect of the Grand Opera House at Paris, – enough to say that they are vulgar and display no token of genius and sense of beauty. They are appropriate to a gambling hell. That is all that can be said of them.

“The Casino,” says Miss Dempster, the authoress of Vera, “is the thing that all Europe, Asia, and America talk of, that all moralists decry, and that all pleasure-seekers declare to be a paradise. It is the Casino that gives wealth and fashion to this section of the coast. It is the Casino that causes a dozen trains to stop daily at Monte Carlo; that keeps up the palace, the army, the roads, the opera-house, and the Hôtel de Paris. It is the green table that keeps the gardens green and the violins in tune; that has brought 3,000 residents and so many hundred prostitutes to the town; that gives work to 1,000 servants, and causes the annual issue of about 335,000 tickets. When we consider these facts, the fabulous beauty of the site, the mildness of the climate, the good dinners, the better music, the pigeon-shooting, and the many exciting chances, can we wonder that Monte Carlo is in every mouth?”

It is just the fact that the site is so exquisitely beautiful that is the pity of it all. Why should the moral cesspool of Europe be precisely there? How much better were it in the Maremma or the Campagna, where the risk to health and life would add zest to the speculation with gold. As long as men people the globe there will be gambling, and it is in vain to think of stopping it. All the lowest types of humanity, the Lazaroni, the North American Indians, the half-caste Peruvians and Mexicans, resort to it with passion, and the unintellectual and those without mental culture throughout Europe will naturally pursue it as a form of excitement. It is therefore just as well that there should be places provided for these individuals of low mental and moral calibre to enjoy themselves in the only way that suits them, but again, the pity is that one of the fairest spots of Europe, this earthly paradise, should be given over to harlots and thieves, and Jew moneylenders, to rogues and fools of every description. The entire principality lives on the tables, the prince, the bishop, the canons, the soldiery, the police, the hotel-keepers, those who have villas, the cabdrivers, the waiters, the boatmen, all are bound together by a common interest – the plunder of such as come to Monte Carlo to lose their money. The institution must be kept going, every scandal must be hushed up. If a case of suicide occur, in ten minutes every trace disappears, and no public notice is given of what has occurred. It is against the interest of every one connected with the place, with Nice also and Mentone, to allow such an event to transpire.

If any trust may be reposed in the assertions of Captain Weihe, a German naval artillery officer who has resided at Monte Carlo for three seasons, the cases are far more numerous than is supposed. According to him, directly a man has shot or hung himself, he is whisked away by the police and the body concealed till it is ascertained that no one is particularly interested in his fate. Then, at the end of the season, the bodies of the suicides are packed in cases that are weighted, and the boatmen sink them far out at sea between Monte Carlo and Corsica.

According to the same authority, the bodies were formerly thrust into the holes and cracks in the limestone on which the Casino and the tributary buildings of Monte Carlo stand, but the condition in consequence became so insanitary that the place had to be cleared of them, and a large body of workmen was imported from Italy and employed on this work, and the corpses removed were disposed of at sea. Captain Weihe asserts as a matter of his own knowledge or observation that from the upper part of the rift of Pont Larousse, in 1898, sixty corpses, from the lower by Villa Eden ten or twelve were removed.

The game of roulette is composed of two distinct divisions, that of numbers and that of cadres. Upon the former it is possible for the player to win thirty-five times the value of his stake; but then, the bank has thirty-six chances against him. Upon the cadres there is not so great a risk; for rouge or noir, pair or impair, passe or manque, there are nearly the same chances for the players as there are for the bank; but then, on the other hand, the player can win no more than the value of his stake.

The bank, with the odds on zero, normally absorbs one-seventieth of all the money staked on each table during the course of the year; that would be against constant players with capital behind them equal to the bank; but the majority of players take a comparatively limited sum with them and play without a system, until it is lost, and then perforce stop; whereas if they had the bank’s unlimited time and capital, they would play, losing only one-seventieth of their stake on each coup, and prolong the time required to lose a given capital. This constant game of what would in America be called “freeze out,” enormously increases the bank’s chances over the calculable one-seventieths of the staker, and is doubtless the main cause of its large winnings. The profits of the company were, in 1904, something like £1,250,000. This, at the calculable odds, would mean the staking during the year of the enormous sum of £87,500,000. But owing to the way the usual player stakes, as above described, probably a small fractional part of that sum would be sufficient to provide that amount of revenue. As M. Blanc was wont to say: “Rouge gagne quelque fois; noir aussi quelque fois – mais Blanc toujours.”

If players had unlimited capital, and were allowed without check to adopt the martingale or pyramid system, they would run small chance of losing. This consists in choosing a cadre and playing resolutely upon it, each time doubling the stake, until that which is backed wins, which it is certain to do if continued long enough. When it wins, the player has recovered the total of his stakes plus one, except the toll on zero, whereupon he would revert to the minimum stake. But the bank knows this as well as any one, and draws a line beyond which there is no doubling allowed.

At roulette, the minimum stake is five francs; but at trente-et-quarante, a game at cards, the lowest stake is twenty francs. The amount of systems proposed, published, and advertised, is prodigious: every one has his system, who is an enthusiastic gambler, and every one has led to confusion and loss. One hears at intervals of lucky players who have broken the bank. But what guarantee have we that these are not decoy ducks, or at all events persons allowed to do so, as an advertisement, and a means of luring other persons to try their chance to do the same? The last of those who has written is one Josephine Lorenz, Schaff dir Gold in Monte Carlo, published at Munich in 1905. Sir Hiram Maxim in his Monte Carlo, London, 1904, tells a significant story about the breaking of the bank by Lord Rosslyn and the late Mr. Sam Lewis. After about seven consecutive wins, it was said that the bank had been broken; a bell was rung, and a factor of the bank was summoned and required to bring a fresh supply of money. It was delivered, the play proceeded, and a second time the bank was broken. This led to immense excitement: hundreds of people crowded about the table and followed the lead of the two lucky stakers, with their smaller ventures. The next time they won on seventeen coups; after that, however, each lost 12,000 francs, and those who had docilely followed them lost also. The bank was not really broken the third time, but pretended and proclaimed that it had been.

“However,” says Sir Hiram, “my suspicions were excited; I did not believe for a moment that the bank had actually been broken. I knew that there had been a great deal of play during the day, and that the winnings at this particular table must have been very heavy indeed. I therefore remained to see the money taken from the table, when I found it was exactly as I had expected; there was at least a peck of large bank notes. It had not been necessary for the bank to send for money at all; this had been done for effect. It was telegraphed all over the world that Lord Rosslyn and Mr. Sam Lewis had broken the bank three consecutive times in a single evening. True, the bank had lost money, but they turned it into a valuable advertisement.”

That is not all. Next day Lord Rosslyn and Mr. Lewis again tried their luck, and lost at whatever they tried, whether at roulette or at trente-et-quarante. Lord Rosslyn staked fifteen times in as many minutes, and never won a single “coup.”