High at the right rose a terrace like a hanging garden, attached to a
huge white hotel. In front of the building, and also very high, ran a
long covered gallery where there appeared to be restaurants and shops.
At the left were gardens; and then in a moment more, coming out into an
open square, all Monte Carlo seemed made of gardens with extraordinary,
ornate white buildings in their midst, sugar-cake buildings made for
pleasure and amusement, all glass windows and plaster figures and
irrelevant towers, the whole ringed in by a semi-circle of high, gray
mountains. It was a fantastic fairyland, this place of palms and bosky
lawns, with grass far too green to seem real, and beds of incredibly
brilliant flowers.
One section of the garden ran straight and long, like a gayly patterned
carpet, toward a middle background of climbing houses with red roofs;
and it began to spread almost from the steps of the cream white building
with jewelled and gilded horns, which Mary had seen in Peter's Riviera
snapshots: the Casino. As the omnibus swung round a generous half
circle, slowly now to avoid loitering groups of people, Mary saw many
men and women arriving in motors or on foot, to go up the shallow flight
of carpeted marble steps which led into the horned building. She thought
again of an immense animal face under these erect, glittering horns; a
face with quantities of intelligent, bright glass eyes that watched, and
a wide-open, smiling mouth into which the figures walked confidently.
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