The ground that he had set his heart upon was close to the cure's
garden, and it belonged to Achille Gonzales. Already, at Vanno's
request, the cure had interviewed both Achille and the older Gonzales.
An appointment had been made for three o'clock, and the cure was to have
introduced the two rich peasants, father and son, to the Prince; but
owing to the procession which Vanno and Mary had seen, he was not able
to keep his engagement. And rather strangely, Mary's host had been
prevented by much the same reason, from accepting Vanno's invitation to
meet him "on the land" a little later. He too had a funeral service that
day, but a very different funeral, and one which oppressed "St. George"
Winter with a peculiar sadness. Death, as a rule, did not seem sad to
him; but he had a horror of the habit of gambling, which appeared to his
eyes like an incubus on a man's life, a dead albatross hung round the
neck to rot. And this man who had died and was to be buried in the
cemetery at Monaco had been a gambler for thirty years. He and his faded
wife had existed rather than lived in a third-class hotel, where they
kept on the same rooms year after year, never going away in the summer
unless, if exceptionally prosperous, to spend a few of the hottest weeks
in the mountains. Their tiny rooms were given them at a cheap rate
because the man brought clients to the hotel, "amateurs" who wished to
learn his great system, the system to whose perfecting he had devoted
thirty years.
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