1936 On the Continent

this unrelenting effigy of her lost beauty with a revolver.”
    “You got that out of a novel by Elinor Glyn. If you don’t stop, I’ll cry.”
    “Come along then. To cheer you up, we’ll go round to the Nice Lawn Tennis Club, which is quite near, and if you have any luck you may even get a game with the King of Sweden. Oh, wait a minute, though; I’m afraid your game’s off. I forgot that this week there is an international tournament on and the King will be playing in the doubles with your champion Perry. But come along anyway. We shall see some good tennis, even if we don’t get a game ourselves.”
    “That was a lovely afternoon. First art and then a first-class tennis tournament. Now, before going home to change, just tell me what that church or castle is up there on the heights in the distance with that enormous dome. For the last three days I seem to be seeing it wherever I am, from the Promenade des Anglais as well as from the window of my hotel.”
    “Oh, that! That’s the Nice Observatory, the cupola of which is one of the marvels of the world. It was built by the famous Eiffel and weighs about a hundred tons. And by an amusing application of Archimedes’ law, it simply floats on water like a boat. Your Queen Victoria, when she was in Nice—and she was here fairly often, as you know—used to visit it each year on foot, although it is about 4 miles outside the town. If it weren’t already 6 o’clock I’d suggest running up to see it in a car.”
    “I’ve got an appointment at 7, but perhaps we might fill in the time by going to the Old Town, which I have heard so much about in London.”
The Old Town
    “The Old Town is as picturesque, with its winding streets, its washing hanging out of all the windows, and its innumerable children tumbling over each other between the wheels of the passing cars, as Palermo, Naples or Marseilles, and far cleaner too. The dark passages, the old churches, and even the street fountains are full of historical legends and memories. Oh, look! We’re in theRue de la Préfecture. Do you see number 14 over there with the plate fixed on it? That’s where the famous violinist Paganini died on May 27th, 1840—‘the devil’s pal’ as they called him, whom the Bishop of Nice refused to bury ‘for having preferred women to the Mass,’ and whose body lay for three years on the slab of Villefranche before being buried in Genoa.”
    “You certainly seem to know all the gossip of the Riviera.”
    “Pretty old gossip that! As far as the gossip of the town to-day is concerned, the best spot to pick it up is at the golf club.”
    “I thought Nice had no golf clubs.”
    “Of course it has. The Nice Golf Club is not in the town itself, but about 7 miles out at Cagnes-sur-Mer. It was the favourite golf club of Edward VIII when he was living at Golfe Juan in 1935.”
    “We’ll go there at the very first opportunity. To-morrow afternoon if we can. My friends in London will get positively ill with jealousy when they hear I’ve had the same professional to teach me as the King.”
A Good Story
    “No difficulty about that. If I were you, I’d go at the same time to the Auberge de Cros in Cagnes where he often used to lunch after a game of golf. As a matter of fact, there is rather a good story about his first visit to the Auberge. He went there with a few friends and the innkeeper, a woman, hadn’t the remotest idea who he was.”
    “‘I want a Bouillabaisse,’ he said, ‘I’m just dying of hunger.’”
    “‘A Bouillabaisse, sir!’ exclaimed the inn-keeper, ‘I couldn’t give you a Bouillabaisse to-day, not if you were the President of the Republic. Why, I haven’t got any lobsters or any other fish in the house.’”
    “‘And if he were the future King of England, what then?’ joked the Prince’s private secretary, Major A.”
    “She suddenly recognised who her guest was and grew pale. An hour afterwards they all sat down to a wonderful
Bouillabaisse Nicoise
.”
    “Not a bad story! You must take us to this inn of yours to-morrow at the latest.”
    “Yes, but the funniest thing of all is that since that day the poor woman suspects every foreigner of being a prince or a queen
incognito
, and if you only go there with that new hat of yours she’ll probably take you straight off for the Duchess of Kent in person.”
Rise and Fall of the Carnival of Nice
    Whatever corner of the world you may come from—Birmingham, Sidney, Chicago or Shanghai—you