ry enjoyment,--has to be turned into a painful early fast. And when
at last the thing has been done, and the torment endured, the sounds
heard have not always been good of their kind, for the money has not
sufficed to purchase the aid of a crowd of the best musicians. But at
Monte Carlo you walk in with your wife in her morning costume, and
seating yourself luxuriously in one of those soft stalls which are there
prepared for you, you give yourself up with perfect ease to absolute
enjoyment. For two hours the concert lasts, and all around is perfection
and gilding. There is nothing to annoy the most fastidious taste. You
have not heated yourself with fighting your way up crowded stairs; no
box-keeper has asked you for a shilling. No link-boy has dunned you
because he stood useless for a moment at the door of your carriage. No
panic has seized you, and still oppresses you, because of the narrow
dimensions in which you have to seat yourself for the next three hours.
There are no twenty minutes during which you are doomed to sit in
miserable expectation. Exactly at the hour named the music begins, and
for two hours it is your own fault if you be not happy. A
railway-carriage has brought you to steps leading up to the garden in
which these princely halls are built, and when the music is over will
again take you home. Nothing can be more perfect than the concert-room
at Monte Carlo, and nothing more charming; and for all this there is
nothing whatever to pay.

But by whom;--out of whose pocket are all these good things provided?
They tell you at Monte Carlo that from time to time are to be seen men
walking off in the dark of the night or the gloom of the evening, or,
for the matter of that, in the broad light of day, if the stern
necessity of the hour require it, with a burden among them, to be
deposited where it may not be seen or heard of any more. They are
carrying away "all that mortal remains" of one of the gentlemen who have
paid for your musical entertainment. He has given his all for the
purpose, and has then--blown his brains out. It is one of the
disagreeable incidents to which the otherwise extremely pleasant
money-making operations of the establishment are liable. Such accidents
will happen. A gambling-house, the keeper of which is able to maintain
the royal expense of the neighboring court out of his winnings and also
to keep open for those who are not ashamed to accept it,--gratis, all
for love,--a concert-room