When The Prince Is Not At Home He Can
Readily Get Leave To Visit The Palace For Twenty Minutes, But On My
Unlucky Day The Prince Was Doubly At Home, For He Was Sick As Well As In
Residence.
I satisfied myself as well as I could, and I am very easy to
satisfy, with my drive through
The pleasant town, which is entirely
Italian in effect, with its people standing about or looking out of
their windows in their Sunday leisure, and quite Roman in the
cleanliness of its streets. I took due pleasure in the unfinished
exterior of the Oceanographic Museum and the newly finished interior of
the Monaco Cathedral. The cathedral, which is so new as to make one
rejoice that most other cathedrals are old, is of a glaring freshness,
but is very handsome; somehow in spite of its newness it contains the
tombs of the reigning family, and perhaps it has only been newly done
over. The museum which is ultimately to be the greatest of its kind in
the world, already contains somewhere in its raw inaccessible recesses
the collections made by Prince Albert in his many cruises, and is of a
palatiality worthy of a sovereign with a tenant so generous and prompt
in its rent as the Administration of the Casino of Monte Carlo.
This fact, namely, that the princely grandeur and splendor of Monaco all
came out of the gaming-tables, was something that the driver of my
landau made me observe, when our intimacy had mounted with our road, and
we paused for the magnificent view of the sea from the headland near the
museum.
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