"You are regarding the island--you see its contours; now shut your eyes.
"'_Messieurs faites vo' jeu._'--There's the big fast Steamer that has just run over from Marseille in ten hours with a full passenger list of French, English, Russians, and Americans. Few have braved the sea-trip just to idle about the _casino_ as they used to do near Monaco. These are men and women who have come for hard business at the tables, and who for the most part expect to break or be broke.
"There is a gorgeous hotel awaiting them at the head of the harbour, where they dress and dine, and then out they go, down the avenues of rustling date-palms (which bear electric lamps amongst their ochre fruit-clusters), and so on, to the most sumptuous building in the world, the new Cabreran _casino_.
"It differs hugely from the old temple of chance on the edge of the Continent--that _enfer sur terre_ set amid a _paradis_. There is no ornate concert-room here, or theatre or opera house. There is not even a _salon_ for gossip and smoke and exercise. The whole is one enormous _salle de jeu_, and the clink of gold against yellow gold is the only instrumental music. The cartwheel five-franc piece is nowhere permissible now, and at the _rouge et noir_ tables hundred-franc notes are the smallest stake. There is a change in everything except in the croupiers and the chefs, and the actual tables and machinery over which they preside. Even the atmosphere is new. The old dry heat is no more. In its place is a moist warmth, heavy with the scent of heliotrope and tuba roses. It seems as if one of the scent factories at Hyères had staved its vats somewhere close at hand. Change everywhere. Mesdemoiselles les cocottes----But I weary m'sieu' with my twaddle. '_Rien ne va plus._' The farce is over.
"Regard that brown promontory yonder, the easternmost horn of Palma Bay. With permission take my _lunette_. So; now you cannot fail to see. A ship of the Romans laden with pottery struck there in time past, filled, and went down in deep water. The fishermen often bring up in their nets unbroken pieces from her cargo, crocks and pipkins identical in shape and texture with those the islanders use to-day. Ah, m'sieu', but they are ignorant, these Mallorcans, and happy in their ignorance. Food is so easily gained that none need starve; they have the best climate imaginable, free from the sirocco which plagues Algeria, and from the mistral which kills one on the Riviera; they are too indolent to meddle with politics; they live in a lotus-land of beauty and ease. We should despise them, monsieur, but I fear many of us will envy their lot."