The Casino, in its extravagance, is indeed just such a castle in the air as a young man would build, a fabric of his dream, his palace of delight. The very town tingles with life, with excitement, with restlessness, with the playfulness of everything. It is a butterfly town, for it lives only for a few gay months. The air is laden with the scent of flowers, while the honeymoon wind lies asleep on the heaving bosom of the deep. Moreover it is a town of the south, of the warm, indolent south, where, as Sancho Panza would say, there is—whatever happens—“still sun on the wall.” Here in the south, as compared with the north, the seasons are reversed. The winter is the time for pleasure; the summer for rest, for seclusion within shut doors and, it may be, for forgetfulness of things. The winter in the north is symbolic of the closing days of life and of the weariness of old age; for the world has then become cold, dark and cheerless, as well as indifferent and possibly unkind. The summer in the south is, in its turn, the symbol of the end of the pageant of youth. The gardens are faded and parched up, the flowers are withered and dead, the grass is a waste of arid brown, the fountains are dry and the very earth is cracked with thirst. The world, spent and panting, has sunk into a drugged sleep like a man exhausted by a fever. The days of riotous living have come to an end; passion has burnt itself out; the rivers of pleasure are now beds of stone and the Dead Sea apple is the only fruit left on the tree. [Illustration: MONTE CARLO FROM MONACO.] As the southern winter begins again the freshly-sown grass springs up; the lawns become green; the buds open; the roses, the heliotrope, the geraniums and the mimosa break into flower and the world is as gay as the sun and a caressing wind can make it. It is then a tempting time to think of the drab, mist-shrouded island of England with its sodden fields and the rain dripping from the thatch, of London, of those sad houses and those awful streets, of the slush-covered roads, of the muffled faces and the blue hands, of the hours of semi-darkness, of the sun that is seen as a red disc in a fog. Because Monte Carlo, as a town, appears to be symbolic of all that is young it must not be assumed that its inhabitants have acquired eternal youth. Many attempt it, many struggle to attain it with an eagerness which is pathetic and pitiable. They are like gaily-dressed ghosts, a little stiff in movement, following a figure that dances before them like a faun. There is a butterfly called “The Painted Lady” and perhaps it will suffice to say that the existence of this fluttering thing will come often to the minds of those who stroll along the Terrace in the sun.