The Catholic World, Vol. 19, April 1874‐September 1874Various
Religion
The Catholic World, Vol. 19, April 1874‐September 1874
Various
Catholic Church -- Periodicals
It is true indeed that he does eat, the prince of the ancient name, and
exquisitely beautiful little town, of Monaco. But it is food that would
give an indigestion to any man with a conscience. The prince has reserved
to himself of his lovely tiny principality very little more than his large
palace and the surrounding gardens. The rest is let to the keeper of a
gambling establishment built and organized on a very magnificent scale,
and standing, with its hotel and several gay shops, in the most exquisite
Italian gardens that imagination can picture—veritable gardens of Armida,
with terrace above terrace, flights of white, gleaming steps, handsome
balustrades, and all the glorious flowers and foliage of far‐distant and
still more sunny regions. They command a view of unspeakable beauty. They
are full of all the sweet, peaceful suggestions of lovely nature,
heightened and enhanced by the order and arrangement of subtle art. As I
wandered up and down the marble stairs, and from beneath the shade of
eucalyptus, palm, mimosa, tamarisk, and cypress, into the sunny walks
bright with flowers, my heart sank within me at the dreadful thought that
all this had been brought together for no other purpose than to minister
to human passions of the worst kind, and to accumulate sordid gains by
trading on vice. Games of chance may not, in themselves, be wrong. Far be
it from me to assert that they are. But if the chronicles of Monaco could
be truly written for only one season, we should look on this beautiful
scene, where God’s best gifts in bountiful nature have been used to
decorate and adorn it to the utmost, as simply one of the gates of hell,
and probably one of its broadest and largest. The moon was riding through
a pure expanse of spotless blue, her reflection dancing on the rippling
sea with silver footsteps, as we passed down the flights of broad stairs
from terrace to terrace to join the night‐train to Mentone. The journey
took us barely twenty minutes; and we were silent and depressed. We had
seen no startling sight: all was perfectly decorous and calm. A slight
click, click, very occasionally, as the heaps of gold had been piled on
the _tapis vert_, and a subdued, muffled noise, hardly perceptible, as the
croupiers dragged forward the gains and the losses of silent figures that
sat or stood around the numerous gambling‐tables—that was all. Hours
passed. People came and went with noiseless tread and controlled
countenance. No man committed suicide in our presence. No woman shrieked
at her loss or laughed at her success. Outwardly, it was calm, silent, and
intense. But there is a wordless language which speaks from one human soul
to another, and which, whether we will or no, reveals something of the
inner state and the unspoken secrets. The very air teemed with these
secrets. And as I passed out into the quiet night, I wondered whether
perhaps in hell there will be the same decorous silence, without the
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