A Tragic Idyl

That night (toward the end of February, 188--) a vast crowd was thronging the halls of the Casino at Monte Carlo. It was one of the momentary occasions, well known to all who have passed the winter season on the Corniche, when a sudden and prodigious afflux of composite humanity transfigures that place, ordinarily so vulgar with the brutal luxury of the people whom it satisfies. The gay madness that breaks out at Nice during the Carnival attracts to this little point of the Riviera the moving army of pleasure hunters and adventurers, while the beauty of the climate allures thousands of invalids and people weary of living, the victims of disease and of ill fortune; and on certain nights, like that on which this narrative begins, when the countless representatives of the various classes, scattered ordinarily along the coast, suddenly rush together into the gaming-house, their fantastic variety of character appears in all its startling incongruities, with the aspect of a cosmopolitan pandemonium, dazzling and sinister, deafening and tragical, ridiculous and painful, strewn with all the wrecks of luxury and vice of every country and of every class, the victims of every misfortune and disaster. In this stifling atmosphere, amid the glitter of insolent and ignoble wealth, the ancient monarchies were represented by three princes of the house of Bourbon, and the modern by two grand-nephews of Bonaparte, all five recognizable by their profiles, which were reproduced on hundreds of the gold and silver coins rolling before them on the green tables.

Neither these princes nor their neighbors noticed the presence at one of the tables of a man who had borne the title of King in one of the states improvised on the Balkan Peninsula. Men had fought for this man, men had died for him, but his royal interests seemed now to be restricted to the pasteboard monarchs on the table of trente-et-quarante. And king and princes, grand-nephews and cousins of emperors, in the promiscuity of this international resort, elbowed noblemen whose ancestors had served or betrayed their own; and these lords elbowed the sons of tradesmen, dressed like them, nourished like them, amused like them; and these bourgeois brushed against celebrated artists--here the most famous of our portrait painters, there a well-known singer, there an illustrious writer--while fashionable women mingled with this crowd in toilets which rivalled in splendor those of the demi-monde. And other men poured in continually, and other women, and especially others of the demi-monde. Through the door they streamed in endlessly, of all categories, from the creature with hungry eyes and the face of a criminal, in search of some fortunate gambler whose substance she might absorb as a spider does that of a fly, to the insolent and triumphant devourer of fortunes, who stakes twenty-five louis on every turn of the roulette and wears in her ears diamonds worth 30,000f. These contrasts formed here and there a picture even more striking and significant; for example, between two of these venders of love, their complexion painted with ceruse and with rouge, their eyes depraved by luxury and greed, a young woman, almost a child, recently married and passing through Monte Carlo on her wedding journey, stretched forth her fresh, pretty face with a smile of innocence and roguish curiosity.

Further on, the amateurs of political philosophy might have seen one of the great Israelitish bankers of Paris placing his stake beside that of the bitterest of socialist pamphleteers. Not far from them a young consumptive, whose white face spotted with purple, hollow cheeks, burning eyes, and fleshless hands announced the fast approach of death, was seated beside a "sporting" man, whose ruddy complexion, broad shoulders, and herculean muscles seemed to promise eighty years of life. The white glare of the electric globes along the ceiling and the walls, and the yellow light that radiated from the lamps suspended above the tables, falling upon the faces of this swarming crowd revealed differences no less extraordinary of race and origin. Russian faces, broad and heavy, powerfully, almost savagely Asiatic, were mingled with Italian physiognomies, of a Latin fineness and of a modelling that recalled the elegance of ancient portraits. German heads, thick, and, as it were, rough-hewn, with an expression of mingled cunning and good nature, alternated with Parisian heads, intelligent and dissipated, which suggested the boulevard and the couloirs of the Variétés. Red and energetic profiles of Englishmen and Americans sketched their vigorous outlines, evincing the habit of exercise, long exposure to the tanning air and also the daily intoxication of alcohol; while exotic faces, by the animation of their eyes and mouths, by the warm tones of their complexions, evoked visions of other climes, of far-off countries, of fortunes made in the antipodes, in those mysterious regions which our fathers called simply the isles. And money, money, endless money flowed from this crowd on to the green tables, whose number had been increased since the previous day. Although the hands of the great clock over the entrance marked a quarter to ten, the visitors became at every moment more numerous. It was not the sound of conversation that was audible in these rooms, but the noise of footsteps moving about the tables, which stood firm amid this surging crowd like flat rocks on the mounting sea, motionless under the lash of the waves. The noise of footsteps was accompanied by another no less continuous--the clinking of gold and silver coins, which one could hear falling, piling, separating, living, in fact, with the sonorous and rapid life which they have under the rake of the croupier. The rattle of the balls in the roulette rooms formed a mechanical accompaniment to the formulae, mechanically repeated, in which the words "_rouge_" and "_noir_," "_pair_" and "_impair_," "_passe_" and "_manque_" recurred with oracular impassibility. And, still more monotonous, from the tables of trente-et-quarante which lacked the rattle of the wheel, other formulæ arose incessantly--"_Quatre, deux. Rouge gagne et la couleur--Cinq, neuf. Rouge perd, la couleur gagne--Deux, deux. Après_--" At the sight of the columns of napoleons and hundred-franc pieces rising and falling on the ten or twelve tables, the bank-notes of one hundred, five hundred, and a thousand francs, unfolded and heaped up; the full dress of the men, the jewels of the women, the evident prodigality of all these people, one felt the gaming-house vibrating with a frenzy other than that of loss and gain. One breathed in the fever of luxury, the excess and abuse of pleasure. On nights like this gold seems to have no longer any value, so fast is it won and lost on these tables, so wildly is it spent in the hotels, restaurants, and villas which crowd around the Casino like the houses of a watering-place around the spring. The beauty of women is here too tempting and accessible, pleasure is too abundant, the climate too soft, comfort is too easy. The paradise of brutal refinement installed here on this flower-clad rock is hostile to calm enjoyment and to cool reflection. The giddiness which it imparts to the passing guest has its crisis of intensity, and this night was one of them. It had something of the Kermess about it, and of Babylonian furore. Nor did it lack even the Mene, Tekel, Upharsin of the Biblical feast, for the despatches posted on one of the columns in the vestibule recounted the bloody episode of a strike that had broken out since the previous day in the mining district of the North. The telegram told of the firing of the troops, of workmen killed, and of an engineer murdered for revenge. But who pictured in concrete images the details of this tragic despatch? Who in this crowd, more and more athirst for pleasure, realized its revolutionary menace? The gold and silver coins continued to roll, the bank-notes to unfold and quiver, the croupiers to cry "_Faites vos jeux_" and "_Rien ne va plus_," the balls to spin around the wheels, the cards to fall on the green cloth, the rakes to grasp the money of the poor unfortunates, and each one to follow his mania for gambling or for luxury, his fancy for snobbery and vanity, or the caprice of his ennui. For how many different fancies this strange palace, with its doors like those of the Alhambra, served as the theatre. On this night of feverish excitement it was lending one of its divans to the preparatives for a most fantastic adventure, the mere announcement of which recalls the advertisements of the Opéra Comique, the music of our great-grandmothers, and the forgotten name of Cimarosa--a secret marriage.

The group of three persons who had been compelled to choose a corner of this mundane caravansary for that romantic conspiracy was composed of a young man and two women. The young man appeared to be thirty-two years old. That was also the age of one of the women, who was, as they say in America, the chaperon of the other, a girl ten years younger. To complete the paradoxical character of this matrimonial conference in the long room that separates the roulette halls from those of the trente-et-quarante, it is only necessary to add that the young girl, an American, was in reality chaperoning the official chaperon, and that the project of this secret marriage did not concern her in the least. She was seated at the end of the divan, unmistakably a sentinel, while her friend and the young man talked together. Her beautiful brown eyes fearlessly scrutinized the passing crowd with the energy and confidence natural to a girl of the United States, accustomed from her childhood to realize her individuality, and who, if she dispenses with certain conventionalities, at least knows why, and is not ashamed of it. She was beautiful, with that beauty already so ripe which, accentuated by a toilet almost too fashionable, gives to so many American women the air of a creature on exhibition. Her features were delicate, even too small for the powerful moulding of her face and the strength of her chin. On her thick, chestnut-colored hair she wore a round hat of black velvet, with a rim too wide and with plumes too high, which rose in the back over a cachepeigne of artificial orchids. It was the hat of a young girl and a hat for the afternoon, but, in its excess, it was quite in keeping with her dress of glossy cloth and her corsage, or rather cuirass, trimmed with silver, which the most celebrated couturier in Paris had designed for her. Thus adorned, and with the superabundance of jewellery that accompanied this toilet, Miss Florence Marsh--that was her name--might have passed for anything in the world except what she really was--the most straightforward and honest of young girls, helping to prepare for the conjugal happiness of a woman equally honest and irreproachable. This woman was the Marquise Andryana Bonnacorsi, a Venetian by birth, belonging to the ancient and illustrious dogal family of the Navagero. Her dress, though it, too, came from Paris, bore the marks of that taste for tinsel peculiar to Italian finery, which gives it that fufu air, to employ an untranslatable term, with which our provincial bourgeoisie ridicules these unsubstantial ornaments. A flock of butterflies in black jet rested upon her black satin dress. The same butterflies appeared on the satin of her small shoes and among the pink roses of her hat, above her beautiful light hair of that red gold so dear to the painters of her country. The voluptuous splendor of her complexion, the nobility of her somewhat heavy features, the precocious development of her bust accorded well with her origin, and even more the soft blue of her eyes, in which there floated all the passion and languor of the lagoons. The light of her blue eyes enveloped the young man who was now speaking to her, and with whom she was visibly in love, madly in love. He, in the full maturity of his strength, justified that adoration more sensual than sentimental. He was a remarkable type of the manly beauty peculiar to our Provence, which attests that for centuries it was the land where the Roman race left its deepest imprint. His short, black hair, over the straight, white forehead; his pointed, slightly curling beard, the firm line if his nose, and the deep curve of his brows, gave him a profile like that of a medal, which would have been severe, if all the energy of a born lover had not burned in his soft eyes, and all the gayety of the South sparkled in his smile. His robust and supple physique could be divined even under his coat and white waistcoat, and these signs of animal health were so evident, his somewhat excessive gestures seemed to evince such exuberance, such perfect joy in living, that one failed to notice how impenetrable were those ardent eyes, how shrewd the smiling mouth, and how all the signs of cunning calculation were imprinted on that face, so reflective under its mobility.