yourself up with perfect ease to absolute enjoyment.  For two hours the concert lasts, and all around is perfection and gilding.  There is nothing to annoy the most fastidious taste.  You have not heated yourself with fighting your way up crowded stairs; no box-keeper has asked you for a shilling.  No link-boy has dunned you because he stood useless for a moment at the door of your carriage.  No panic has seized you, and still oppresses you, because of the narrow dimensions in which you have to seat yourself for the next three hours.  There are no twenty minutes during which you are doomed to sit in miserable expectation.  Exactly at the hour named the music begins, and for two hours it is your own fault if you be not happy.  A railway-carriage has brought you to steps leading up to the garden in which these princely halls are built, and when the music is over will again take you home.  Nothing can be more perfect than the concert-room at Monte Carlo, and nothing more charming; and for all this there is nothing whatever to pay.

But by whom;—­out of whose pocket are all these good things provided?  They tell you at Monte Carlo that from time to time are to be seen men walking off in the dark of the night or the gloom of the evening, or, for the matter of that, in the broad light of day, if the stern necessity of the hour require it, with a burden among them, to be deposited where it may not be seen or heard of any more.  They are carrying away “all that mortal remains” of one of the gentlemen who have paid for your musical entertainment.  He has given his all for the purpose, and has then—­blown his brains out.  It is one of the disagreeable incidents to which the otherwise extremely pleasant money-making operations of the establishment are liable.  Such accidents will happen.  A gambling-house, the keeper of which is able to maintain the royal expense of the neighboring court out of his winnings and also to keep open for those who are not ashamed to accept it,—­gratis, all for love,—­a concert-room brilliant with gold, filled with the best performers whom the world can furnish, and comfortable beyond all opera-houses known to men must be liable to a few such misfortunes.  Who is not ashamed to accept, I have said, having lately been there and thoroughly enjoyed myself?  But I did not put myself in the way of having to cut my throat, on which account I felt, as I came out, that I had been somewhat shabby.  I was ashamed in that I had not put a few napoleons down on the table.  Conscience had prevented me, and a wish to keep my money.  But should not conscience have kept me away from all that happiness for which I had not paid?  I had not thought of it before I went to Monte Carlo, but I am inclined now to advise others to stay away, or else to put down half a napoleon, at any rate, as the price of a ticket.  The place is not overcrowded, because the conscience of many is keener than was mine.