SAN REMO
We only remained ten days at Nice, for we were at the end of October,
the season of gusty winds and showers. The weather was abominable, and
we had to remain indoors all day. So we started for San Remo, where my
husband’s brother had settled with his family for the whole winter. The
“Villa Maria,” which they were to inhabit, was not ready yet to receive
them, and they had to put up in the meanwhile at the “Quisisana,” a
boarding-house kept by an old German lady. The society offered by the few
tenants of the “Quisisana” was not of a specially enlivening description.
There was an English spinster lady on whom wooers had turned their backs
long ago, dried up in celibacy, who never was kissed, I am sure, for
with such a thin body you might get a bruise in coming in contact with
her. She was a blue-stocking in the bargain, and read Homer in Greek; a
crushingly superior person who made other people feel ignorant. I was
becoming intolerably tired of her superior culture and stopped her every
time she began any long sentences. There was another British lady, who
was a very different sort of person, her tongue being the only sharp
thing in her whole stout person. What she lacked in height was amply made
up in width: whichever way you put her down she’d roll. After dinner she
regaled us with songs which she cooed raising her eyes to the ceiling, at
which I had to make the greatest effort to keep serious. She was awfully
sentimental, and when she turned her eyes upon me with so melting an
expression that I thought she was going to kiss me, I precipitately fled.
The third boarder was a consumptive German student, frightfully pale and
thin, who, notwithstanding his malady, manifested an immoderate love for
the flute, and practised it assiduously to the great annoyance of his
neighbours.
San Remo is not very gay. The only distraction you get is to walk around
a music-kiosque in the public garden, in the company of nursery maids
wheeling perambulators in front of them. At nine o’clock of the evening
the music stops, the shops are closed, and everybody goes to bed.
One morning we took a carriage and went over to Monte Carlo, situated
at some hours’ distance from San Remo. We followed all the time the
beautiful _Corniche_ road, cut out in the rock. Our driver, who made
the journey for the first time, did not know that he had to take a pass,
and was not allowed to go further. It is lucky that we found a carriage
on the Italian side of the frontier, at Ventimiglia, which brought us to
Mentone, where we took the train to Monaco. Here a new disappointment
awaited us! We were too late for the train and had to wait hours for the
next one. To shorten the time, we went for a stroll through Mentone, and
entered the first hotel to have lunch, but it was not mealtime at the
hotel, and we returned fagged out and ravenous to the railway station.
All Monte Carlo seemed composed of gardens, with the big, white building
of the Casino in the midst, the whole ringed in by high grey mountains.
We went straight to the Casino and looked in at the gambling-rooms.
The tables were surrounded by anxious players with a preponderance of
courtesans of high and low degree, with painted faces and rings down
to their nails, who followed the game with breathless interest. An old
woman, dressed in dyed silks and a home-made hat, was losing heavily, and
staked her last francs with despair written on her face. Many players
come to Monaco with their pockets full, and have nothing to pay their
return journey. Suicides often take place here. I tried my luck, and lost
something like ten francs.
The Principality of Monaco is quite a small one. It would take half an
hour to walk over the island, from one end to the other. The reigning
Prince has a diminutive army of sixty regular soldiers, two officers and
three constables, and that’s all! Sergy asked one of the constables who
was on duty at the railway station, how their army could manage without
any cavalry, and he answered that they wouldn’t have known what to do
with it, for it would take more time to saddle a horse than to walk
around their whole territory!
Another day we went for an excursion to the monastery of _Notre Dame de
la Garde_, where the church is decorated with little cardboard boats that
the sailors’ wives offer, with their prayers, to the Madonna, when their
husbands are at sea.
We removed at last to the Villa Maria, where we felt the cold very much.
The rooms were badly heated, and the draughts in the corridor were strong
enough to work a windmill, and they gave me a horrid cold. In the night
the noise of the passing trains and the roar of the sea hindered our
sleep. We hastened our departure and started for Paris, where we intended
to spend a few days before returning to Russia. Towards night three young
Corsicans entered our compartment, and we were doomed to pass a sleepless
night, for we couldn’t stretch our legs, and felt very uncomfortable.
Our fellow-travellers were the very image of Napoleon Bonaparte, and
resembled each other like three peas.