Little Land of the Big Wheel

Nobody Seems to have mentioned that His Most Serene Highness Rainier III, the Prince of Monaco, Duke of Valentinois, Marquis of Baux, Sire of Matignon, Count of Thann, Baron of Buis, Seigneur of Saint-Rémy, etc., and, of course, the husband of Miss Grace Patricia Kelly of Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, is the only absolute monarch in the western world. In this respect, he is comparable to the King of Saudi Arabia, the Iman of Yemen, the Kabaka of Buganda, the Dalai Lama of Tibet and, historically, to the Pharoah of Egypt, the Tyrant of Athens, the Mikado of Japan, Ivan the Terrible, Nero and Nebuchadnezzar -- an important consideration, I think, for any young lady of Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, who is married to the fellow, but a consideration the newspapers, at any rate, have curiously let by.

Rainier III, as Prince of Monaco, has the unqualified power of life and death in his principality, and if, some drowsy afternoon, he steps outside of his gray-and-pink, parapeted palace and slices the heads off 10 or a dozen bystanders, it couldn't be questioned that he acted within his rights, although, I suspect, a good deal of grousing would be heard afterwards. In fact, Rainier may lawfully decapitate not only the 21,000 Monégasques, his subjects, but, if they rile him sufficiently, his wife and daughter too, be they Monégasque, American or what-you-will. This disturbing fact was also overlooked by the newspapers and, until recently, by Rainier himself; then, in 1954, it was recalled to him by Father Francis Tucker of Wilmington, Delaware, the court chaplain, who seems to consider it very funny. "Hmm," said Rainier, according to Father Tucker, and disappeared with a faraway look in his eyes, and shortly afterwards he married Miss Kelly. His feelings at the time, I assume, were nothing but the highest; yet a marriage to an absolute monarch is not to be entered upon lightly, and Miss Kelly, I would hope, certainly has bethought herself of the possibilities during this past year.

For a century at least, the absolute monarchs of Monaco have not been happily married. The parents, grandparents and great-grandparents of Prince Rainier were divorced, one of them, Great-grandmother Mary, after being tortured by Great-grandmother Albert I who, of course, was acting unquestionably within his rights. Great-grandmother Mary escaped to Italy, however, and, as she did so, kidnapped her son, Prince Louis II, and seeing how Rainier was kidnapped by his father. Prince Pierre, it ought to be recognized, I think, that many terrible things can happen in marriages to absolute monarchs which, by and large, do not happen among the peasantry. The sort of pitfall to be encountered in such unions was exemplified in 1757, when Miss Marie Catherine di Brignole-Sala was married to Honoré III, the then monarch. The marriage was solemnized by proxy; then Miss di Brignole-Sala sailed into Monaco to meet her prince, exactly as Miss Kelly, 200 years later, on the S.S. Constitution sailed into Monaco to marry hers. Prince Honoré III in 1757, being and absolute monarch, stood in Monaco and waited for Miss di Brignole-Sala, but Miss di Brignole-Sala, being, as she explained, a niece of the Doge of Genoa who also was pretty absolute, stood on the ship and waited for Honoré; so there they stood, husband and wife, he on the shore, she on the ship, as twilight came to the quiet Mediterranean. In 1956, as the S.S. Constitution laid by, Rainier, too, stood on a yacht and awaited Miss Kelly. She, fortunately, isn't the niece of the Doge of Genoa but of Mr. Walter Kelly, "The Virginia Judge," a vaudeville comic: nothing so absolute in that, of course, and Miss Kelly hurried from the S.S. Constitution into the arms of Prince Rainier as tens of thousands cheered.

They attempted to kiss, I remember reading in the newspapers, but Oliver, her poodle, got in the way. Later, as the happy couple left on their honeymoon, Oliver, the poodle, got in the way again, and Prince Rainier said, according to the newspapers, "Give the dog to the captain," and Miss Kelly did. Thus, another pitfall of the marriage, Oliver, was narrowly averted -- but is it the last, especially? What if Miss Kelly, for example, has married an absolute monarch only to discover that he's an absolute nincompoop, too? Then, what? In 1660, Miss Charlotte Catherine de Gramont ran against this very predicament, and what she did, finally, was flee to another monarch, Louis XIV -- a recourse which, of course, is no longer available to Miss Kelly. By all reports, including her own, Charlotte Catherine de Gramont had been the Grace Patricia Kelly of her century: "My teeth are dazzling," she said, "and my lips are crimson. There is something very captivating in my smile." By way of contrast, her husband, Prince Louis I of Monaco, was fat, clumsy and dreadfully obtuse; his nose was like "a trumpet," his lips were like "blubber" and he walked "like a porter, his legs far apart." On their wedding night, Louis, walking like a porter and wearing a nightcap, went to the royal bedchamber with Miss de Gramont, her maid-in-waiting, his valet, two pages, and, burgeoning in the pages' arms, a portable sacristy of relics, rosaries, images, cruets and cough drops. Having put the sacristy on the night-table and having sent the domestics off, he clambered into bed with Miss de Gramont. She, certainly no virgin, was beginning to have second thoughts about the whole marriage, but, coyly hoping to make the best of it, she blew the candles out. "Madame?" said Louis.

"What does, that mean?"

"I don't know, monsieur."

"Shall I call somebody to light them again?" Good grief, how stupid can a fellow be?

"That is not necessary, monsieur."

Here, however, I shall break off, despite the precedent of our historical novels and visit the newlyweds at seven the next morning, when we discover Louis in bed, asleep, and Miss de Gramont in the adjoining room, the maid's room, weeping hysterically. Anon, she returned to the bridal chamber and waited for Prince Louis to wake up. "Corbleu!" he said when he did, "so, madame, now you're my wife: and make no mistake, it's a great honor for you." Really, that was too much, and Miss de Gramont gave Louis a piece of her mind -- a reckless thing, for Louis, as absolute monarch of Monaco, had an unquestionable right to decapitate her. Amiably, he didn't, but Miss de Gramont was foresighted enough to hurry to Versailles, the court of Louis XIV. "How I've laughed, and many others with me," she wrote, "the king amongst them!" -- for Miss de Gramont did a book about it, which is how I found out. Prince Louis, she reminisces, got a list of her boyfriends and hanged them in effigy, which, too, was unquestionably within his rights, and "half of the men here, at court, are decorating the highways of Monaco. Oh, how I've laughed!" At present, Miss Kelly has not yet written about her sexual life, but her mother, Mrs. Margaret Kelly, has -- "My daughter Grace, Her Life and Romances," it was called and was serialized in many dozens of newspapers. It was an inauspicious idea, Mrs. Kelly, and I certainly hope that none of your daughter's friends are hanged, in effigy or otherwise.

Miss Kelly and Prince Rainier III had not been married yet, when I was visiting Monaco, nor, indeed, had he popped the question. His Most Serene Highness was sowing his wild oats, I learned, principally at a hideaway on Cap Ferrat and, an adamantine bachelor, was doing it with married women who, he knew, wouldn't be trying to marry him. Nevertheless, the names of Marilyn Monroe, Gisèle Pascal, Princess Margaret, Princess Alexandra and a certain Miss Jo Ann Stork of Champaign, Illinois, had been advanced, and Miss Kelly herself was being advocated by Father Tucker, Art Buchwald and other influential parties. I, contemplating a break in the situation any day. prudently tried to discover just what sort of an absolute monarch this Rainier was and, accordingly, what sort of an existence his theretofore undetermined wife was in for. What I learned was heartening, indeed. Rainier, for one, had never decapitated anybody, nor had he tortured, kidnapped or hanged anybody in the flesh -- or in effigy; at worst, he had fired his secretary of state and exiled his sister, Princess Antoinette, but both were enjoying the best of health. Furthermore, he certainly wasn't a nincompoop, having been educated at Summerfields and Stowe, in England; at Rosey, in Switzerland: and at Montpellier and Paris, in France. He knew English, French, Italian and Spanish; he made a tidy $200,000 a year; he possessed a very presentable, gray-and-pink palace in Monaco, a hideaway on Cap Ferrat, an apartment in Paris, a squadron of royal yachts -- Deo Juvante II, Physalie IV and Raiatea -- and no fewer than four automobiles, with license plates mc 1, mc 2, mc 3 and mc 4 -- factors, I decided, that are surely conducive to a happy marriage. Then, having learned all this about Rainier the monarch and wishing to learn about Rainier the man, I went, naturally, to the General Commissariat of Tourism and Information. There, M. Gabriele Olivier, the commissary, after greeting me affectionately, went to his filing cabinet and withdrew a big manila envelope inscribed "prince" and, having given this to his secretary and having told her to acquaint me with its contents, he himself withdrew. She, the secretary, began to translate the insides of the manila envelope. "Hees Highness, ze Prince Rainier III, Prince of Monaco," she began, as I scribbled furiously, "ees 75 kilos een gravity and measures a meter 75. He ees roboost and ... ooh, de belle prestance." She threw out her arms expansively.

"Good-looking?" I said.

"Oui, de belle prestance. Everybody who has approached Hees Highness says, 'He ees charming.' He ees un ban camarade."

"A good fellow."

"A good fellow," said the secretary. "He ees passionate for ze books nautical, for ze preemitives, and for ze moosic, for ze horizons vast, ze silence, and for ze solitude of ze deepness. Ze soul of Hees Most Serene Highness has expressed eetself een delicate and capteevating poems. Hees body veegorous has found a relaxation eendispensable een sport, of wheech he encourages ze manifestations. He practices: ze tennis, ze golf, ze yachting, ze sweeming, ze ski, ze nautical ski, and ze sub-marine."

"The skin-diving," I said.

"Out, ze sub-marine. Ze most profound depth to wheech Hees Most Serene Highness has plunged ees 45 meters. He recalls heemself, een Soomer-fields, zat he was champion of ze boxing of ze category. Ze Prince Rainier of Monaco ees exempt of egoism; on ze contrary, he has ze altruism and he heemself has helped ze humans of whom suffering ees ze lot. Ze prince ees president (continued on page 58) Big Wheel(continued from page 26) of ze Cross-Red Monégasque and he ees weety, seemple, gay and amiable."

"Amiable."

"Oui."

Thus reassured, I closed my investigation into Prince Rainier and, after several more days in his principality, I continued eastward, and I was in Punial, a kind of principality in the Himalayas, when I learned that he and Miss Grace Patricia Kelly of Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, had been married. One thousand six hundred journalists were at the affair, and, as I was at Punial, I didn't have anything particularly to add, except my very best wishes, in which the Rah of Punial, an absolute monarch himself, joined me. According to the New York Times, Miss Kelly, at the wedding ceremony looked at the prince "distraughtly," and considering the fortunes of such of her predecessors as Miss Charlotte Catherine de Gramont, Miss Marie Catherine di Brignole-Sala and Miss Mary Victoria Douglas Hamilton -- her Great-grandmother-in-law Mary -- I think we can understand why. However, I also think an absolute monarch of Rainier's kidney can, insofar as any absolute monarch can, provide a happy home for his covenanted wife. The Rah of Punial has no fewer than four of them, who, he assured me, are happiness itself.

• • •

It was early December, the off season, when I visited the Principality of Monaco, but the temperature was in the sixties and there wasn't a cloud in the blue, omnipresent sky. Monaco, of course, is located on the Riviera; its average temperature for summer and winter is 62, its rainfall is only two and one-third inches a month, its sun is shining nine hours and 12 minutes a day. Under this bountiful sun, palm trees grew, and the houses of Monaco simmered on the mountainside in pink, yellow and tan pastels; below, the harbor was full of yachts, a giant canebrake of wood, wires and ropes, silhouetted against the sky.

The principality is half a square mile in area, which is very small, indeed -- so small. I'm afraid, that several of its fine hotels, the Ritz, for example, and many of its celebrated international attractions -- the Monte Carlo Country Club, the Monte Carlo Golf Club and Monte Carlo Beach -- are really in another country, France, and not in Monaco at all. Monaco, as Saint-Simon explained, a bit indelicately I think, "is a rock, from whose center its sovereign can, so to speak, spit over his own boundaries." The boundary is never farther from the water than 750 yards, and generally it's half of that; irresponsibly, irrepressibly, it scampers over the side streets of Monte Carlo, sundering a store here, a house there; at one place, on the Boulevard de France, a block from the plaza, it totters like a drunken sailor from sidewalk to sidewalk, so that any pedestrian but a drunken sailor will successively find himself in Monaco, France, Monaco, France, Monaco and France. A situation like this is something I worry about, so, one morning, I paid a visit to the Boulevard de France to learn how the pedestrians were getting on. They -- a very archetypical professor with a sack of oranges; a number of fat, middle-aged women in dirty raincoats, berets and ponderous shoes; a bearded type; children -- were getting on splendidly. As there weren't any customs offices or officials, or, indeed, any signs at any of the international boundaries, the Monégasques were gadding from Monaco to France, from France to Monaco, with utter impassivity. They didn't show the slightest grief to be leaving their fatherland, nor, a minute later, the slightest joy to be returning, and eventually, when I saw that nobody else was worrying about the situation, I said the hell with it, deciding, however, that Monégasques just haven't any sense of national pride -- alas, the truth as I later learned.

Monaco, I'm told, was founded in 1600 B.C. by Hercules himself, who, having captured the man-eating mares of Diomedes and being about to capture the red cattle of Geryon, have into Monaco's harbor and modestly christened it "Port Hercules." Anyway, it was certainly known as that originally, and more recently, at the time of the French Revolution, was known as Fort Hercules -- more of this in a moment -- while the present name, "Monaco," is just another name for Hercules. Monaco has belonged to Rainier's family, the Grimaldis -- one of whom, incidentally, was named Hercules I -- for 600 years, and, however one feels about absolute monarchs, one must admit the Grimaldis have a reasonable claim to it, having been given the principality in 972, having conquered it again in 1297 and, finally, having bought it from a certain Mr. Spinola in 1339, at Genoa's market place, for 1300 florins. The Grimaldis have reigned in Monaco with a single interruption, the French Revolution. Then, Monaco proclaimed "the perpetual downfall of the House of Grimaldi," which had fled; proclaimed, also, the Republic of Monaco; and negotiated a treaty with the neighboring republic, France, as follows:

Treaty

Article I. Peace and allegiance will prevail between the French Republic and the Republic of Monaco.

Article II. The French Republic is delighted to make the acquaintance of the Republic of Monaco.

Which covered the situation nicely. A month later, the Monégasque Republic was abolished and Monaco became, at its own request, Fort Hercules, France, but these shenanigans were ended in 1814, when Talleyrand, a friend of the Grimaldis, wrote on the Treaty of Paris' margin, "and the Prince of Monaco will be restored to his state."

What ensued in the next half-century is typical of just how absolute, if he goes about it spiritedly, the Prince of Monaco can be. Honoré V, the Prince, returned to Monaco in his coach-and-four (encountering, as he traveled south, Napoleon, that escapee from Elba, who according to one historian said, "Hullo, Monaco, where are you going?"). There, in Monaco, Honoré set an oppressive tax on bread, meat, vermicelli, playing cards, straw hats, garbage, birth, death -- in all, $64,000 a year, to be spent on his indulgences in Paris, where, among other things, he published a book, Pauperism, and the Best Means to Destroy It. Soon, people were leaving the country, so Honoré taxed that, raising considerable havoc on the Boulevard de France, I suspect. Also, he cut the trees down, marketing them for pocket money; the roads, meanwhile, were allowed to crumble; the village clock had stopped; the Monégasques were starving; "and," said a delegation, "we can not forget that formerly it wasn't so."

"I shall not listen," said Honoré. "I came to govern you. I don't need any counsel."

Eventually, of course, the prince himself was pauperized. He, Charles III, was living in four threadbare rooms of the gray-and-pink palace and dining on olives, anchovies and red herrings, but, unlike his predecessor, he was open to counsel and, when it was volunteered by a friend in 1851, he listened attentively: "Set up gambling. You already ruined your own people, so, ruin other people, too." Such was the start of Monte Carlo Casino and, subsequently, of the Summer Casino, the International Sporting Club (a casino), the Café de Paris (a casino), the Monte Carlo Country Club, Monte Carlo Golf Club, Monte Carlo Opera House, Monte Carlo Theatre, Theatre of Light, Theatre of Fine Arts, Museum of Fine arts, Museum of Oceanography, Museum of Prehistoric Anthropology, Prehistoric Grotto, Exotic Garden, and Center of Zoologic Acclimatation; and, for the further divertisement of the gamblers and others, the Monte Carlo Rally, Grand Prix of Monaco, Concours d'Elegance, Battle of Flowers. International Championships (continued on page 68)Big wheel(continued from page 58) for tennis players, bridge players, water skiers, golfers, riflemen and dogs, International Regattas, Galas, Carnivals, and Balls, Balls, ad infinitum. The village clock is working now; and nobody is starving; and none of the citizens is paying tax -- but are they citizens, or, I'm afraid, are they only the ushers, underlings and hired hands at the Circus, née Principality, of Monaco?

For the visitor, like myself, in the midst of all this gala et cetera, a week in Monaco is something like an awful, systematized house party, in which he constantly is being told to play charades or to pin the tail on the donkey. Nevertheless, as a conscientious tourist, I saw what I was expected to: stalagmites, at the Prehistoric Grotto; Homo neanderthalensis, at the Museum of Prehistoric Anthropology; Euphorbia grandicornis, from Ethiopia, at the Exotic Garden; live ostriches, at the Center of Zoologic Acclimatation; dead whales, at the Museum of Oceanpgraphy. Then, at the close of a wearying day, I sought tranquillity at the silent, cool aquarium in the Museum of Oceanography and meditated on the words of Albert I, an oceanographer himself, when he said, "As beings on the earth, we are renegades who have escaped from the ocean. But are we happier in the brilliant sunshine than we were in the phosphorescences of the deep waters? Perhaps the true happiness dwells in the quiet depths." A brave opinion, that, almost a heresy in sunshiny Monaco and quite contradictory to the General Commissariat of Tourism and Information, but still, I thought, as I browsed about the aquarium, a very sensible opinion, too. In the quiet, phosphorescent tanks, a goldfish blew bubbles; a trigger fish, as indolent as an alley cat, rubbed its parti-colored sides against a coral; a capon, lying like a tired pancake, on the olive, seaweedy floor of a tank, patiently waited for its skin to go away. Truly, here was a happy seascape -- until I came to the poisson-roi.

The poisson-roi wanted out. Blindly, incorrigibly, that poor fish was swimming hither and yon, searching all the corners of its tank, trying, trying, trying, for an untold millionth time, to find the exit, that secret exit, that open-sesame that still eluded it. Always, its expression was one of jaded perseverance, of desperate hope: precisely the expression that I beheld, the next evening, on more than a hundred poor fishes at the Society for Sea-Baths, generally known as the Monte Carlo Casino.

• • •

The Society for Sea-Baths and Foreigners' Club of Monaco, to use its proper name, was founded in 1861 and, exactly a half-century later, when it opened a hydropathic annex, it finally gave somebody a sea-bath. Meanwhile, the society had soaked the very clubbiest of foreigners -- King Edward VII, King Edward VIII, a dozen other kings, queens and emperors, the Aga Khan, the Pasha of Marrakech, Sir Winston Churchill, Douglas Fairbanks, Jr., J. Pierpont Morgan and Charlie Chaplin, among others -- and had gotten itself a reputation, of course, as the ne plus ultra of the fashionable world. Now, 1957, the Society for Sea-Baths is still contending that, "from all parts of the globe, aristocrats, artists, literary men and sportsmen rush towards Monte Carlo, the pole of attraction," but alas, the truth is otherwise, as I discovered that evening when, after paying the admission fee, 42 cents, and after by passing a room of slot machines, I entered the principal gambling hall of Monte Carlo Casino.

The effect was that of a deadly, overheated waiting room. In its ponderous heat, waiting, as it were, for a long-delayed milk train, a hundred men and women milled insipidly: men, surely no aristocrats, with sullen, half-shaven faces; women with landlady faces, heavy, stagnant and fat; a prostitute; a frowzy dissipate, whose hair, like a colony of mud-brown worms, escaped from beneath her hat in every direction. At the gaming tables, they sat like subway riders, insensible, glum, looking at life through the lower halves of their eyeballs and twisting their lips for exercise, up and down. Everywhere, a melancholy silence clung like a damp bedsheet. This was the Monte Carlo Casino, and all the while the roulette wheels turned, as windmills on a torpid, summer afternoon, and the croupiers all watched with looks of exquisite boredom, and the lazy, ivory ball, at last, settled in a compartment, red or black, off or even, according to the inexorable law of averages -- which is to say, totally unpredictably. With pencils, papers and occult earithmetical tables, the poor fishes were trying, trying, trying to predict it.

There was something magnificently mad here. Philosophically, I suppose, it typified man's unending search for meaning in a meaningless world, his pitiful attempts to leave his little aquarium, but it wasn't fun, certainly it wasn't recreation. To make the casino somewhat happier, less like a funeral parlor, the management, I learned, has tried such desperate innovations as double roulette, a variety that paid, occasionally, $1200 to one, and mercury, a raceway of little tin airplanes, like Coney Island, but always the gloom continued, until, in 1950, the management went despairingly to Reno, Nevada, and returned to Monte Carlo with a crap table. For a month, the old casino was awakened by that happy hullabaloo, "Four and trey, and take it away!" "Five and two, and you're all through!" "Little Joe from Alamo!"; then, the croupiers revolted, and Little Joe, Little Phoebe and their lighthearted friends were supplanted by "sept perdant," "le point est neuf," and other vapid Gallicisms, which, the croupiers explained, were more harmonious with Monte Carlo, and the pall returned. While I was there, our happy, American crap game was being patronized by three phlegmatic Englishmen, who, one after another, were shaking the dice rather like Captain Queeg and letting them dribble to the comatose, green table. "Ah," said one of them addressing me, "you shouldn't have come to Monte Carlo, One hour, and you're a goner."

I assured the fellow that, after one hour at Monte Carlo, it was everything I could do to keep awake. In fact, it was more than I could do and, as he rattled the bones, as they trickled across the table, as the croupier murmured, "Le point est neuf," I toddled home.

The next morning, I ran across Diana and Malcolm Browne, two Americans I had known in Andorra. We had a happy reunion, indeed; at their hotel, Malcolm gave me an Andorrano cigarette, a Charlemagne, and Diana, meanwhile, read us a love letter that she had received from Paco, a bullfighter, whom we had also known in Andorra. Paco had written:

En valer de una mujer

Reside, no en el tener

Sino en el ser

Tú eres,

Which is to say, we decided, that Diana's value didn't reside in what she had, which was Malcolm, but what she was. Diana observed that what she was, currently, was bored silly, having been at Monte Carlo Casino a week and having decided, with Malcolm, that the Principality of Monaco couldn't hold a candle to the Valleys of Andorra. For another hour, we sighed for the happier, bygone days of the casino, when guns were fired, when bombs were tossed, when kings, queens and emperons were playing; when "splendid women," I had read, "with bold eyes and golden hair and marble columns of imperial throats were there to laugh, to sing songs, to tempt"; when "sometimes, however, a person may be seized with a violent attack of hysterical screaming, in which circumstances it is convenient to have the surgery ... close at hand"; when Mr. Charles Deville Wells, a cockney, by winning $200,000, by causing the casino's tables to be draped in black, became, in 1891, the man who broke the bank at Monte Carlo; when, in 1892, the bank at Monte Carlo broke Mr. Wells; when a French princess hurled a $20 chip to the tables, winning $720 instantaneously; when the place was racy, electric, alive. Then, Diana, Malcolm and I resolved to do something about it.

That evening, the three of us appeared at Monte Carlo Casino with enough scientific paraphernalia to fission the atom. Malcolm carried a Dunlop & Jackson log-log slide rule, a stopwatch and a periodic table of the elements; I, the American Ephemeris for 1954; and Diana, a speedometer, a table of natural logarithms and another of trigonometric functions. With all these, and with the most intense, professorial of miens, we seated ourselves at a table, and I started to bet, frequently consulting the logarithms, the trigonometric functions, the American Ephemeris, etc., and receiving from Diana and Malcolm such exotic memoranda as:

AgNO3+HCl?AgCl?+HNO3,

X = tS8XYe2pitVot,

and

fr(z) = n!/2pi ?f(t)/c (t-z)r+i dt.

From the start, we had extraordinary luck. Betting at random on red, black, odd and even, we won continually, and within 10 minutes we had doubled our capital ($2.80), at which rate, as Malcolm calculated on the slide rule, we would have realized a handsome 50 to 80 billion dollars by midnight. Then, as Malcolm turned his attentions to the stopwatch, as Diana gave me the scribbled intelligence that:

cos? = cosn?/n {1 -- n(n -- 1)/1.2 tan2 ?/n + …}

I peered about, to see what kind of sensation the three of us were causing.

None at all. Nobody was watching Malcolm, nobody was watching Diana, nobody was watching me; nobody was watching the wheel, nobody was watching the ball; everybody, as always, was watching his own, occult, arithmetical tables. So there they sat, in the Monte Carlo Casino, insensible, glum, trying, trying, trying, for an untold millionth time, to find the aquarium's exit.