Our own destination was Monte Carlo, where we anchored our yacht in the pretty little bay of Monaco, and, going ashore, found the army of the Prince—consisting of about sixty-five carabineers—in no small state of excitement, owing to the prospect of its being forced perhaps by circumstances to abandon its attitude of armed neutrality, and sucked into the whirlpool of hostilities, whereof the Riviera might so soon become the sanguinary scene. But such a prospect had not the least apparent terror for the visitors to the beautiful Inferno at Monte Carlo—men and women of all nations—Jews and Gentiles, Elamites and Assyrians—who, in spite of the military bustle going on around them—French battalions of Chasseurs and Alpine troops arriving and departing by road and rail—continued to frequent the tables of the Casino with an all-engrossing passion for their occupation worthy of the abstruse philosopher of Syracuse. ‘_Noli turbare circulos meos_,’ also exclaimed these lost-to-all-else worshippers of the roulette wheels. It is not, perhaps, generally known in England, but the fact is that during the last few years the French have been busy constructing a formidable line of forts all along the Riviera from Marseilles to Mentone; and every commanding peak and mountain-top overlooking the sea and the seaside road is capped with one of these terrifically strong stone-works. Careless pleasure-seekers on the Riviera are not likely to take special notice of these mountain-crowns, with heavy long-range guns for their jewels; but there they are, all the same. They form, indeed, France’s silent answer to the Triple Alliance, and were placed there since the conclusion of that pact to bar the advance of Italy, should that Power, in fulfilment of her treaty engagements with Germany, be called upon to assail the flank of France, and select as her line of attack the sea-board rather than the mountain route. [Illustration: ITALIAN ARTILLERY CROSSING THE MONT CENIS. ]