n important factor in
the social life of Nice. They had money and they could give an
American points on spending. Attracted by the sun, many made their
homes in Nice. They lived like the lilies of the field. They could
count on a sure thing. The moujiks of great estates toiled for them,
and from the days of their great-great-grandfathers the revenues had
never ceased. During the first years of the World War, the Russians
were in high favor at Nice. They were the powerful allies of France,
brothers-in-arms, who fought for the common cause. Then came the
Revolution. Cosmopolitan Nice would have forgiven the defection of
Russia. But when the revenues from Petrograd and Moscow banks no
longer came in, that was another matter! Where the pursuit of pleasure
is king, there is no pity for the moneyless courtier, whatever the
cause of his change of fortune. The Russians sold their jewels and
their fur coats, the rugs and furniture of their villas, and then the
villas themselves. Perhaps they were "accommodated" a little bit at
first. But they were soon left to their own resources.

Before the end of the war, the center of the Russian colony was a soup
kitchen on a side street, presided over by princesses and served by
beautiful million-heiresses of the old regime. Good stuff in those
girls, too, who smiled as gayly as of old and talked to me eagerly
about becoming governesses or stenographers. And real _noblesse_ in
the old men who climbed up the narrow stairs with their pails, coming
to fetch their one meal of the day. In one of them I recognized a
former ambassador to France. The last time I had seen him he was on
horseback between Czar Nicholas and President Loubet crossing the Point
Alexandre III on the opening day of the Paris Exposition of 1900.

Enough of shadows! None ever went to Nice in search of them, and
comparatively few stay long enough to find them. They are in the
picture, and there would be no true picture without them. But they
ought to stay in the background. They do stay there. You smell the
sewage rarely. The all-pervading sunshine is a tonic. Speculating
about why others came here and what they are doing with their lives may
hold you through the rainy season. The Carnival puts you in a more
material frame of mind. Unless Lent is early, the sun begins to warm
the cockles of your heart on Mardi-Gras, and by May it will almost
blind you on the water-front. One is not in the mood to