This ingenious manœuvre was agreed upon. Its execution was watched with gasping interest, for the happiness of two fond hearts depended upon its correct execution. If the prince took one more step than the lady he would be humiliated for ever; whereas if the bride ventured an extra pace she could never hide her blushes while she lived. The crowd was thrilled; the courtiers trembling and the two chief performers as nervous as if they had to walk on a tight-rope. It ended well. The man and the maid met in the exact centre of the plank and, keeping step, marched to the shore with the precision of two German soldiers on parade. So admirable was the performance that the heavy military boot of the prince and the little satin shoe of the lady touched the soil of Monaco at the same moment. The crowd shrieked till they were hoarse; the courtiers bowed to the earth; the guard became so stiff that they nearly fell backwards, while the band let loose that National Hymn which had been pent up so long. And so—as the story books say—they married and lived happily ever after. It only remains to add one other particular. In the fullness of time the prince died and the princess married again. She married Louis Joseph, Prince of Condé. He had been devoted to her for thirty years and, in spite of her age, still regarded her as the most beautiful creature in the world. They were married in London and under circumstances which rendered the use of a plank unnecessary. XXV THE MONTE CARLO OF THE NOVELIST MONTE CARLO, they told me, was a place of great wickedness, where every path—though lined with flowers—led headlong to the Pit. From the many romances which deal with Monte Carlo I gathered that it was the seat of an intensive culture in iniquity, that it specialised in subtle forms of evil doing and that in its pleasances vice blossomed as the rose. Among what writers always term “the motley crowd” in this fictitious borough were men of quite exceptional depravity, women more accomplished than Delilah and crafty foreigners of the yellow-skinned and black-haired variety who are far too foreign to be real. Suicide, I understood, prevailed as an endemic disease.