I
I sacrificed--for it is a sacrifice to forsake the incomparable play of
the stars and moon on the divine Mediterranean--I sacrificed a few
evenings of my stay in the land of the sun to the consulting of the most
mystic god of this world of ours in the busiest, the most gorgeous and
the most individual of his temples.
This temple stands down there, at Monte Carlo, on a rock bathed in the
dazzling light of the sea and sky. Enchanted gardens, where blossom in
January all the flowers of spring, summer and autumn, sweet-scented
thickets that borrow nothing from the hostile seasons but their perfume
and their smiles lie before its porch. The orange, most lovable of all
trees, the palm, the lemon-tree, the mimosa wreathe it with gaiety. The
crowds approach it by royal stairways. But, mark you, the building is
not worthy of the admirable site which it commands, of the delicious
hills, the azure and emerald gulf, the happy meadows that surround it.
Nor is it worthy either of the god whom it shelters or of the idea which
it represents. It is insipidly emphatic and hideously blatant. It
suggests the low insolence, the overweening conceit of the flunkey who
has grown rich but remains obsequious. Examination shows it to be
solidly built and very large; nevertheless, it wears the mean and sadly
pretentious air of the ephemeral palaces of our great exhibitions. The
august father of Destiny has been housed in a sort of meringue covered
with preserved fruits and sugar castles. Perhaps the residence was
purposely made ridiculous. The builders may have feared lest they
should warn or alarm the crowd. They probably wished to make it believe
that the kindliest, the most frivolous, the most harmlessly capricious,
the least serious of the gods awaited his worshippers on a throne of
cakes inside this confectioner's master-piece. Ah, no; a mysterious and
grave divinity reigns here, a wise and sovereign force, harmonious and
sure. He should have been throned in a bare marble palace, severe,
simple and colossal, high and vast, cold and spiritual, rectangular and
rigid, positive and overwhelming.