Monte
Carlo was in every way tempting. A vast oblong, brilliant with flowers
in artistic patterns, stretched upward from the Casino, and there was an
agreeable park where one might sit. On every other side there were
costly hotels and costly restaurants, including that of the unexampled,
the insurpassable Giro, where one saw people eating and drinking at the
windows whenever one passed, by day or night. Beyond the Casino seaward
were the beautiful terraces, planted with palms and other tropic
growths, where people might come out and kill themselves when they had
nothing left to lose but their lives; and against the dark green of
their fronds the temple of fortune lifted a frosted-cake-like front of
long extent. I do not know just what type of architecture it is of, but
it distinctly suggests the art of the pastry cook when he has triumphed
in some edifice crowning the centre of the table at a great public
dinner. What mars the pleasing effect most is a detail which enforces
this suggestion, for the region of the Casino is thickly frequented by a
species of black doves, and when these gather in close lines of black
dots along the eaves, they have exactly the effect of flies clustering
on the sugary surfaces of the cake.
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