In the pensive sweetness
of the semi-tropical night, this fantastic erection in plaster and
gilding and coloured ornaments seemed an outrage, a taunt, a purposeful
affront; and yet--the very violence of the contrast, its outrageousness,
gave it a kind of obsessing charm.
Unseen from where Mary sat, the Mediterranean sighed upon its ancient
rocks. A faint breath of the mysteriously perfumed air stirred the
exotic palms over her head and made their fronds rub against each other
gratingly, as if some secret signal were being carried on from one to
another. Turning to right, to left, or to look behind her, dimly seen
mountains soared toward a sky that deepened from asphodel to the dark
indigo of a star-powdered zenith. Eastward in the distance ran a linked
chain of lights along the high road that led to Italy; and a bright
cluster like a knot of fireflies, pulsing on the breast of a mountain,
marked the old hill-village of Roquebrune. Kindly enveloping nature was
so sane and wholesome in her vast wisdom and stillness that the
sugar-cake Casino and all its attendant artificialities struck into the
brooding peace a shrill note of challenging incongruity. The little
sparkling patch of light and colour that was Monte Carlo proclaimed that
it was there for some extraordinary and powerful purpose, that its
bizarre beauty was dedicated to exceptional uses; and it occurred to
Mary that the temple of Chance must after all diverge from every rule of
architecture in order to stamp its meaning on the mind.
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