NICE,
Monday in Holy Week, April, 1891.
We are staying in Nice, on the sea-front. The sun is shining, it is warm,
green and fragrant, but windy. An hour’s journey from Nice is the famous
Monaco. There is Monte Carlo, where roulette is played. Imagine the rooms
of the Hall of Nobility but handsomer, loftier and larger. There are big
tables, and on the tables roulette--which I will describe to you when I get
home. The day before yesterday I went over there, played and lost. The game
is fearfully fascinating. After losing, Suvorin _fils_ and I fell to
thinking it over, and thought out a system which would ensure one’s
winning. We went yesterday, taking five hundred francs each; at the first
staking I won two gold pieces, then again and again; my waistcoat pockets
bulged with gold. I had in hand French money even of the year 1808, as well
as Belgian, Italian, Greek, and Austrian coins.... I have never before seen
so much gold and silver. I began playing at five o’clock and by ten I had
not a single franc in my pocket, and the only thing left me was the
satisfaction of knowing that I had my return ticket to Nice. So there it
is, my friends! You will say, of course: “What a mean thing to do! We are
so poor, while he out there plays roulette.” Perfectly just, and I give you
permission to slay me. But I personally am much pleased with myself.
Anyway, now I can tell my grandchildren that I have played roulette, and
know the feeling which is excited by gambling.
Beside the Casino where roulette is played there is another swindle--the
restaurants. They fleece one frightfully and feed one magnificently. Every
dish is a regular work of art, before which one is expected to bow one’s
knee in homage and to be too awe-stricken to eat it. Every morsel is rigged
out with lots of artichokes, truffles, and nightingales’ tongues of all
sorts. And, good Lord! how contemptible and loathsome this life is with its
artichokes, its palms, and its smell of orange blossoms! I love wealth and
luxury, but the luxury here, the luxury of the gambling saloon, reminds one
of a luxurious water-closet. There is something in the atmosphere that
offends one’s sense of decency and vulgarizes the scenery, the sound of the
sea, the moon.
Yesterday--Sunday--I went to the Russian church here. What was peculiar was
the use of palm-branches instead of willows; and instead of boy choristers
a choir of ladies, which gives the singing an operatic effect. They put
foreign money in the plate; the verger and beadle speak French, and so
on....
Of all the places I have been in hitherto Venice has left me the loveliest
memories. Rome on the whole is rather like Harkov, and Naples is filthy.
And the sea does not attract me, as I got tired of it last November and
December.
I feel as though I have been travelling for a whole year. I had scarcely
got back from Sahalin when I went to Petersburg, and then to Petersburg
again, and to Italy....
If I don’t manage to get home by Easter, when you break the fast, remember
me in your prayers, and receive my congratulations from a distance, and my
assurance that I shall miss you all horribly on Easter night.