flowery blue and white
and golden Nice by the most glorious coast road for Monte Carlo. But you
know it well, dear Dad. I suppose there can be nothing more beautiful on
earth. And Monte Carlo is beautiful; but somehow its beauty doesn't seem
real and wholesome and natural, does it? It's like a magnificently
handsome woman who is radiant at night, and doesn't look suitable to
morning light, because then you see that her hair and eyelashes are dyed
and her complexion cleverly made up. If Monte Carlo could be
concentrated and condensed into the form of a real woman, I think she
would be the kind who uses lots of scent and doesn't often take a bath.

We wandered about among the shops and saw the most lovely things, but
somehow I didn't "feel to want" any of them, as my nurse used to say. I
couldn't help associating all the smart hats and dresses and jewels in
the windows with the terrible hawk faces painted to look like doves,
which kept passing us in the streets or the Casino gardens, instead of
thinking whether the things would be pretty on me.

Jimmy knows "Monte" very well, and was inclined to swagger about his
knowledge. There's one thing which I am compelled to admit that he can
do--order a dinner. He took us to a restaurant, led aside the head
waiter, talked with him for a few minutes, and announcing that dinner
would be ready when we wanted it, pioneered us across to "the rooms."
I'd seen so many pictures of the Casino that it didn't come upon me as a
surprise. The first thing that struck me was the overpowering deadness
of the air, which felt as if generations of people had breathed all the
oxygen out of it, and the ominous, muffled silence, broken only by the
sharp chink! chink! of the croupiers' rakes as they pulled in the
money.

Jimmy insisted on staking a louis for me and another for Aunt Mary, who
was enraptured when, she won thirteen louis, and would have given up
dinner to go on playing if she hadn't lost her winnings and more
besides.

When we sat down to our table at the restaurant she was quite depressed,
but everything was so bright and gay that she soon cheered up. Our
tablecloth was strewn all over with roses and huge bluey-purple violets,
and the dinner was _plu_perfect. There was a great coming and going of
overdressed women and rather loud young men, which amused me, but I
think it would soon pall. I can't imagine any feeling of rest or peace
at Monte Carlo, not even in the gardens. To stop lo