CHAPTER the Sixteenth.
Monte Carlo--The European Shrine of Sport and Fashion--Apocryphal Gambling Stories--Leopold, King of the Belgians--An Able and Picturesque Man of Business I Having disported ourselves in and about Paris, next in order comes a journey to the South of France--that is to the Riviera--by geography the main circle of the Mediterranean Sea, by proclamation Cannes, Nice, and Mentone, by actual fact and count, Monte Carlo--even the swells adopting a certain hypocrisy as due to virtue.
Whilst Monte Carlo is chiefly, I might say exclusively, identified in the general mind with gambling, and was indeed at the outset but a gambling resort, it long ago outgrew the limits of the Casino, becoming a Mecca of the world of fashion as well as the world of sport.

Half the ruling sovereigns of Europe and all the leaders of European swelldom, the more prosperous of the demi-mondaines and no end of the merely rich of every land, congregate there and thereabouts.

At the top of the season the show of opulence and impudence is bewildering.
The little principality of Monaco is hardly bigger than the Cabbage Patch of the renowned Mrs.Wiggs.It is, however, more happily situate.
Nestled under the heights of La Condamine and Tete de Chien and looking across a sheltered bay upon the wide and blue Mediterranean, it has better protection against the winds of the North than Nice, or Cannes, or Mentone.

It is an appanage--in point of fact the only estate--remaining to the once powerful Grimaldi family.
In the early days of land-piracy Old Man Grimaldi held his own with Old Man Hohenzollern and Old Man Hapsburg.

The Savoys and the Bourbons were kith and kin.