The people of Monaco pay few taxes, enjoy many privileges, like and laugh at their sovereign, and by no means desire annexation either to France or Italy.  By law they are strictly prohibited from gambling, and are a quiet, thrifty, peace-loving set, kept in order by an army of sixty-one men, ten officers and a colonel, of whom more anon.  Just at present the court of “Liliput” has given room for a great deal of gossip.  His Serene Highness the hereditary prince, and Her Serene Highness the princess, after a few months of matrimonial bliss, have quarreled and separated.  It happened on this wise. (The information I give I know to be correct, as it was communicated to me by an intimate friend of the young princess, and I was at Nice myself when the affair occurred.) About four years ago the young prince of Monaco married, through the influence of the empress Eugenie, the Lady Mary Douglas, sister of the duke of Hamilton and daughter of H.I.H. the princess Mary of Baden, duchess of Hamilton, and grand-daughter of the celebrated Prince Eugene Beauharnois.  The wedding was magnificent, and the bride and bridegroom appeared exceedingly well pleased with each other.  After a brief honeymoon both their highnesses returned to Monaco to reside with the reigning prince and princess.  Very soon afterward the young lady commenced making bitter complaints to her friends of the court etiquette, which she declared was utterly unendurable, especially to a free-born Englishwoman.  An instance will suffice:  One morning Her Serene Highness came down to breakfast before the whole family was assembled.  To her amusement, she beheld on each plate an egg labeled “For His Serene Highness, the reigning prince,” “For H.S.H. the reigning princess,” “For H.S.H. the hereditary prince,” “For H.S.H. the hereditary princess.”  Being in a hurry and hungry, “Her Serene Highness the hereditary princess” sat herself down and ate her own egg and the eggs of her neighbors.  Horror!  Court etiquette was over-thrown.  The egg destined for the august prince Florestan II. had been eaten by his own daughter-in-law!  The outraged majesty of Monaco was indignant, and the youthful aspirant to the throne by no means mild in his reproaches.  However, true Douglas as she is, the old blood of Archibald Bell-the-cat boiled over, and the princess Mary is reported to have read the serene family a famous lecture.  Matters went on in this way until the poor girl could stand it no longer, and one fine day escaped from “jail,” ran down to the station and took the first train for Nice.  A telegram was sent to the gendarmerie at Nice to arrest her as soon as she got out of the carriage.  Accordingly, to her terror, when she put her foot on terra firm a there stood two gendarmes ready to pounce upon her.  It was, however, no joke to arrest an imperial princess, for such Lady Mary is by birth.  The men hesitated, but not so the princess.  Brought up at Nice, she knew all the roads and bypaths of the place by