After lunch we made our way to the Hôtel Bella Riva, which Barfleur in spite of Scorp’s complaints had finally selected. It stood on a splendid rise between Mentone and Monte Carlo; and here, after some slight bargaining we were assigned to three rooms _en suite_ with bath. I was given the corner room with two balconies and a flood of sunshine and such a view as I have never seen from any window before or since. Straight before me lay the length of Cap Martin, a grove of thousands of olive trees reflecting from its burnished leaves the rays of the sun and crowding it completely, and beyond it the delicious sweep of the Mediterranean. To the right lay the bay of Monte Carlo, the heights of La Turbie, and all the glittering world which is Monte Carlo proper. To the left lay Mentone and the green and snow-capped mountains of Ventimiglia and San Remo faintly visible in the distance. Never an hour but the waters of the sea were a lighter or a darker shade of blue and never an hour but a lonely sail was crossing in the foreground. High above the inn at La Turbie, faintly visible in the distance, rose a ruined column of Augustus--a broken memory of the time when imperial Rome was dominant here, and when the Roman legions passed this way to Spain. At different hours I could hear the bugle of some frontier garrison sounding reveille, guard-mount, and the sun-set call. Oh, those wonderful mornings when I was waked by the clear note of a horn flying up the valleys of the mountains and sounding over the sea! Immediately after our arrival it was settled that once we had made a swift toilet we would start for Monte Carlo. We were ready to bring back tremendous winnings--and eager to see this showy world, the like of which, Scorp insisted, was not to be found elsewhere. “Oh, yes,” he said, “I have been to Biarritz and to Ostend and Aix-les-Bains--but they are not like this. We really should live at the Palace where we could walk on the terrace in the morning and watch the pigeon-shooting.” He told a significant story of how once having a toothache he came out of the card-rooms of the Casino into the grand lobby and attempted to pour a little laudanum out of a thin vial, with which to ease the pain. “I stepped behind a column,” he explained, “so that I might not be seen; but just as I uncorked the vial four guards seized me and hurried me out of the place. They thought I was taking poison. I had to make plain my identity to the management before they would let me back.”