MONTE CARLO
San Marino and Andorra have maintained their independence from the Middle
Ages, but as republics. The only reigning families who kept their
domains from being engulfed in the evolution of modern Europe are those
of Liechtenstein and Monaco. What will happen to Liechtenstein with the
disappearance of the Hapsburg Empire is uncertain. Wedged in between the
Vorarlberg portion of the Austrian Tyrol and Switzerland, Liechtenstein
is almost as out of the way, as forgotten, as unimportant, as San Marino
and Andorra. Monaco is in a different situation. The smallest country
in the world covers only eight square miles, and never was very much
larger than it is today. Until half a century ago Monaco was an Italian
principality and not at all an anomaly. For Italy had been broken up
into small political units from the Roman days. At the time of the
unification of Italy, the Italians had to part with a portion of the
Riviera to France. Monaco lost a bit of her coast line--the Menton
district--and became an enclave in France.
Because of the traditional friendship of the Grimaldi family for France,
the principality was saved from extinction when the protectorate of Savoy
(established by the Congress of Vienna) was withdrawn in 1861. In fact,
the male line of the Grimaldi died out just after the War of Spanish
Succession, and the present house is of French descent. But whether
Grimaldi or Matignon, the princes of Monaco have fought for a thousand
years on the side of France against the British especially, but also
against the Italians, Spanish and Germans. As unhesitatingly as his
predecessors had always done, Prince Albert espoused the cause of France
in 1914; his son fought through the war in the French army.
And there is another reason for the continued independence of Monaco.
Republics have no sense of gratitude. After the fall of Napoleon III
Monaco would hardly have survived save for the gambling concession. Four
years before the Franco-Prussian War, a casino and hotels built on the
Roche des Spélugues had been named Monte Carlo in honor of the reigning
prince. The concession, granted to a Frenchman, François Blanc, was too
valuable to spoil by having Monaco come under French law! The Republic
tolerated Monaco--on condition that no French officer in uniform and no
inhabitant of the Département des Alpes-Maritimes (which surrounds
Monaco) be allowed in the gaming rooms of the Casino. It was also agreed
that except in petty cases handled in a magistrate's court all crimes
should be judged by French law and the criminals delivered for punishment
to France.
The arrangement is admirable from the French point of view. The Riviera
has its gambling place of world-wide fame with no opprobrium or
responsibility attaching to the French Government. The
extra-territoriality does not extend to criminals. The inhabitants of
the neighboring French towns are not demoralized by the opportunity to
gamble. French army officers are protected from corruption. It is
presumed that the rest of the world, which can afford a trip to the
principality, will be able to take care of its own morals!
The Monégasques are similarly protected by their sovereign. They, too,
are forbidden to gamble. They profit from the concession in that there
are no taxes to pay in the rich little principality and in that several
hundred thousand foreigners come every year to give big prices for every
little service. But they run no risk of being caught by the snare they
set for others. Prince and people, the Monégasques are like the wise old
bartender, who said in a tone of virtuous self-satisfaction, "I never
drink."
When Tennyson, traveling along the Grande Corniche, saw Monaco, it was of
the old medieval principality that he could write:
"How like a gem, beneath, the city
Of little Monaco, basking, glow'd."
The old walled town, on its promontory, must indeed have seemed a gem in
an unsurpassed setting in the time of Tennyson. For the little Port of
Hercules and the other promontory, Spélugues, were tree- and shrub- and
flower-lined. There was nothing to break the spell of old Monaco. Now,
alas, the Casino and hotels of Monte Carlo cover Spélugues, and between
the promontories La Condamine has sprung up, a town of red-roofed villas,
larger than either Monaco or Monte Carlo and forming with them an
unbroken mass of buildings. Monaco is simply an end of the city,
distinct from the rest of the agglomeration only because it is high up
and on a cape jutting out into the sea.
Unless one went up to explore the old town, one would not realize that it
was more than the palace with its garden and the post-Tennyson cathedral,
too prominent for the good of the medieval spell. La Condamine and Monte
Carlo have reached the limit of expansion. In front is the sea, behind
the steep wall of the mountain. The principality is all city. But the
mountains and sea prevent the exclusion of nature from the picture.
Despite the modern growth of Monaco, from the Grande Corniche the words
of the poet still hold good. Monaco is no longer a predominantly
medieval picture perhaps--but it is still a gem.
The old town is as attractive in walls and buildings as other rock
villages of the Riviera. Three main streets, Rue Basse, Rue du Milieu
and Rue des Briques, run parallel from the Place du Palais out on the
promontory. They are crossed by the narrowest of city alleys, _à
l'Italienne_, and to the right of the Rue des Briques, around the
Cathedral, is the rest of the town. Nowhere does the old town extend to
the sea.
On the sites of the ancient fortifications the present ruler, Prince
Albert, has made gardens and built museums for his collections of
prehistoric man and of ocean life. One ought never to dip into museums.
If you have lots and lots of time (I mean weeks, not hours), or if you
have special interest in a definite field of study, museums may be
profitable. But "doing" museums is the last word in tourist folly. Yes,
I know that skeletons and the cutest little fish are in those museums. I
am not ashamed to confess that I never darkened their doors. Life is
short, and while the Artist revels in his subjects, I find more interest
in studying the living Monégasques than their--and our--negroid ancestors.
For there is a separate race, with its own patois, in Monaco. You would
never spot it in the somewhat Teutonic cosmopolitanism of the Condamine
and Monte Carlo tradesmen and hotel servants. It is not apparent in the
impassive _croupiers_ of the Casino. But within a few hundred yards, in
half a dozen streets and lanes, the physiognomy, the mentality, the
language of the people make you realize that regarding Monaco as a
separate country is not wholly a polite fiction to relieve the French
Government of the responsibility for the Casino. These people are
different, children as well as grown-ups. They are neither French nor
Italian, Provençal nor Catalan, but as distinct as mountain Basques are
from French and Spanish. It is not a racial group distinction, as with
the Basques. In blood, the Monégasques are affiliated to their Provençal
and Italian neighbors.
What one sees in the old town of Monaco is a confirmation of the
assertion of many historians that nationality, in our modern political
sense of the word, and patriotism, as a mass instinct shared by millions,
are phenomena of the nineteenth century. Steam transportation,
obligatory primary education, universal military service, are the factors
that have developed national consciousness, and the exigencies and
opportunities and advantages of the industrial era have furnished the
motive for binding people together in great political organisms. Today
if there were no outside interests working against the solidarity of
human beings leading a commonwealth existence in the same country, the
political organism would soon make the race rather than the race the
political organism.
San Remo and Menton and Monaco are Riviera towns all within a few miles
of each other. People of the same origin have three political
allegiances. In half an hour your automobile will traverse the
territories of three nations. Italians and French fight under different
flags and were within an ace of being lined against each other in the
war. Monégasques do not fight at all. Taxes and tariff boundaries,
schools and military obligations, make the differences between the three
peoples. Put them all under the same dispensation and where would be
your races?
In the old days the _raison d'être_ of the principality was the power to
prey upon commerce. From their fortress on the promontory the Grimaldi
organized the Monégasques to levy tolls on passing ships. Italy was not
a united country. France had not yet extended her frontiers to the
Riviera. This little corner of the Mediterranean escaped the Juggernaut
of developing political unity that crushed the life out of a dozen other
feudal robber states. And when the logical moment for disappearance
arrived, Monte Carlo saved Monaco. Another means of preying upon others
was happily discovered. The Monégasques abandoned pistols and cutlasses
for little rakes. The descendants of those who stood on the poops of
ships now sit at the ends of green tables. The gold still pours in,
however, and no law reaches those who take it.
There is this difference: you no longer empty your pockets to the
Monégasques under compulsion, and the battlements of old Monaco play no
part in your losses. The proverb dearest to American hearts says that a
sucker is born every minute. It is incomplete, that proverb. It should
be rounded out with the axiom that at some minute every person born is a
sucker.
So I look over to the great white building which is the salvation of the
Monégasques--their symbol of freedom from taxes and military service--and
know that the strength of Monaco is the weakness of the world. I return
to the Place du Palais. The Artist is reluctantly strapping up his
tools. We glance for a brief moment at the best sunset view on the
Riviera. Ships sail by unmolested. No more have they fear of the Tête
du Chien and of the huge stone _boulet_ that Fort Antoine used to lance
if a merchantman dared to be deaf to the call of the galley darting forth
from the Port of Hercules. But we?
The Artist's fingers are nimble with the buckle after a day with the
pencil. Pipe is filled from pouch with an inimitably deft movement of
one hand. Reluctant is generally the right word to use when I speak of
the Artist leaving his work. I am not so sure now. As I hope, he does
not suggest a west-bound tram at the foot of the Palais or the 6:40
train; he says,
"If we alternate eighteen and thirty-six this evening, putting by half
each time we win--"
"Like that English old maid we saw last week," I interrupted, "who
doubled just once instead of splitting. I can see the drop of the jaw
now. Even without the false teeth, it would have been hideous."
"On the red then as long as we last," conceded the Artist, who knew my
horror of complicated figure systems, "and there's the sign."
He pointed to the red fringe that lit up fading Cap Martin.
"If we do not get over soon," I answered, "black will be the latest tip
of nature." The Riviera towns under the lee of mountains do not have a
lingering twilight.
But when we had finished dinner an _affiche_ announcing _Aïda_ turned us
from the Salles de Jeu to the Salle du Théâtre. To most people gambling
is a pastime not taken seriously. Only when it is a passion does one
find in it the exclusive attraction of Monte Carlo. This is proved by
the excellence of Monte Carlo opera. No metropolis boasts of a better
orchestra and chorus; and the most famous singers are always eager to
appear at Monte Carlo.