But he slowly shook his
head, whether in regret or whether in stern refusal I shall never know.
He was an Italian, but in the employment of the French republic, and I
have not been able since to credit with certainty his incorruptibility
to his native or his adoptive country; I might easily be mistaken in
deciding either way.
What I am certain of, and certainly sorry for, is the superiority of the
French company's railway carriage, from Ventimiglia on, to the Italian
carriage which had brought us so far, and it is still with unwillingness
that I own the corporation's greater care for our comfort. If we had
been in the paternal care of the administration of the gambling-house.
at Monte Carlo, we could not have been more tenderly or cleanly
cushioned about, or borne away on softer springs; and very possibly a
measure of wickedness in the means is a condition of comfort in the end
to which we are so tempted to abandon ourselves in a world which is not
yet so sternly collectivist as I could wish.
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