He had wandered, aimless and unseeing, through the contrasted charm and picturesque strength of Monaco, strolled by the tiny harbour, up the hill, through the weird suggestion of writhen bone-like cactus-trees and richness of palm and aloe, caroub and rose and glowing flower-bed, past Casino and hotel, still unseeing, his features, made for facile laughter and easy geniality, lined by care and drawn into heavy frowns. From the gardens of Monaco he had looked long and wistfully into the sea breaking so softly at the rock foot, and once again by the harbour, with a sort of irresolute longing that came to nothing. In the funicular he had read and re-read letters, and made calculations with pencilled figures, and then with weary impatience torn them up and scattered them where the line ran steep and sheer above the gorge. And when he stepped out upon the craggy mountain rim at Turbia, his listless feet took him to the plaster hotel tracing its mean outlines upon the sky, beside the majesty of the fine tower that marks Cæsar's subjection of conquered Liguria--subject to so many masters since--to Rome. Perhaps he only went that way because the other occupants of the go-chair, the lady with blackened eyes and red curls pinned outside her hat-brim, the gentleman with the hooked nose, shiny hair, and vast white waistcoat, the grave family party scattering exclamations of _Wunderschön_, _Prachtvoll_, _Echt malerisch_, on the sunny air, the mature maidens, absorbed in Baedekers, and lordly, tweed-clad Britons, conversing in grunts, went straight from the rich flesh-pots of Monte Carlo to the oil and wine of a mean restaurant perched on the stately crag-wall, making the centre view point for scores of miles round. For when he found himself in the grounds looking down upon the vast splendour of mountain and sea, he seemed to recollect himself, turned and went through the village that lies modestly behind the Roman tower, over cobbled paths, under Roman archways, through narrow streets, picturesque with loggia and outside stair and dark-arched entrance, through wide, pleasant spaces planted with trees and scattered with long blocks of limestone, used as seats, and polished to marble by the friction of generations; here meeting a slow-paced pack-mule, peasant-led; here a woman, wearing a huge and heavy basket on her head, like a crown; and here a group of soldiers, in baggy trousers of stained red and worn tunic of soiled blue, with a general air of having slept, unwashed, for weeks in uniform. And west of the ancient village the craggy crest of the Tête du Chien, the fortress of to-day, and east and south sea and mountain, and everywhere garden growth, foliage, and scented blossom, and the beauty of children at play and young women and handsome youths at work. For all this the traveller, looking round and searching in the rich vocabulary of British youth for a term at once fit and comprehensive, found the choice phrase, "Rotten hole, this."