He Alone Bought And Ground The Grain, And Baked The Bread, Which He Sold To His People At An Extortionate Price; He Bought Damaged Flour In Genoa And Fed It To His Subjects At The Same Rate As Good.

When they murmured and threatened rebellion, he threatened in turn that he would rule them with a rod of iron, as if their actual conditions were not bad enough. Some of his oppressions were of a fantasticality bordering on comic opera:

Travellers had to give up their provisions at the frontier and eat the official bread of Monaco; ships entering the port were confiscated if they had brought more loaves than sufficed them for their voyage thither; no man might cut his own wood without leave of the police, or prune his trees, or till his land, or irrigate it; the birth and death of every animal must be publicly registered, with the payment of a given tax, and nobody could go out after ten at night without carrying a taxed lantern. When Nice was annexed to France in 1860 Monaco passed under French protection again, and now it is subject to conscription like the rest of France. Ten years after the beginning of this new order of things the great M. Blanc was expelled from Hombourg, and the Prince of Monaco rented to him the-gambling privilege of Monte Carlo.

Then the modern splendor of the place began. The entire population of the three towns, Monaco, Monte Carlo, and Condamine, is not above fifteen thousand, and apparently the greater part of the inhabitants depend upon the gay industry of the Casino for their livelihood. I should say that the most of the houses in Monte Carlo were hotels, or pensions, or furnished villas, or furnished apartments, and if one could be content to live in the atmosphere of the Casino, which is not meteorologically lurid, I do not know where one could live in greater comfort. It is said that everything is rather dearer than in Nice, for instance, but such things as I wanted to buy I did not find very dear. The rates at the most expensive hotels did not seem exhorbitant when reduced to dollars, and if you went a little way from the Casino the hotels were very reasonable, so that you could spend a great deal of money at the tables which in America you would spend in board and lodging. I fancy that a villa could be got there very reasonably, and as the morals of all the inhabitants are scrupulously cared for by the administration of the Casino, and no one living in the principality is allowed to frequent the gaming-tables, it is probable that domestic service is good and cheap. If I may speak from our experience at our very simple little hotel, it is admirable, one waiter sufficing for ten or twelve guests, with leisure for much friendly conversation in the office, between the breakfasts served in our rooms and the excellent dinners at the small tables in the salon.

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