Democratic Sentinel, Volume 13, Number 31, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 23 August 1889 — A ROMANCE OF MONTE CARLO. [ARTICLE]

A ROMANCE OF MONTE CARLO.

Love and Life with Gold, and. Failing Gold, Love and Death. A young married man of Lyons fell in love with a young married woman. They met secretly, adored each other, 'and agreed to fly together—to put the seas between themselves and their families. But there was a slight difficulty an the way. They had little money lor a long journey, and they wanted to be far, far away—in America for choice. Then the idea came to the man that they would take their small capital of a few hundred francs and go to Monte Carlo and make it into a fortune—a fortune which would enable them to live in peace and plenty on a far-off shore. So it came that one day, with a small box and a portmanteau, the fugitives arrived at Monte Carlo and ,put up in a little hotel where for eight francs a day you can have bed and board. They had only a few hundred francs with them. In the letter which they had left behind they explained that from the first their arrangements were complete. They foresaw the possibilities of the situation. They would play until they had won enough to go to America or they would lose all. And if they lost all they would die together and give their friends no further trouble about them. They were a few days only in Monte ■Carlo. They risked their louis only a few at a time, and they spent the remainder of the days and evenings in strolling about the romantic glades and quiet pathways of the beautiful gardens, whispering together of love and looking into each other’s eyes. The end came quickly. One evening they went up in the soft moonlight to the fairyland of Monte Carlo. They entered the Casino. They had come to their last few golden coins. One by one the croupier’s remorseless rake swept them away, and then the lovers went out of the hot, crowded rooms, out from the glare of the chandeliers and the swinging lamps, into the tender moonlight again. Down “the Staircase of Fortune,” arm in arm they went, along the glorious marble terraces that look upon the sea, on to where at the foot of the great rock on which Monaco stands there lies the Condamine. It was their last walk together. The lovers were going home to die. That night, in some way which I was unable to ascertain, the guilty and ruined man and women obtained some charcoal and got it into their bedroom. They then closed the windows and doors and prepared for death. They wrote a letter-—a letter which an official assured me was so touching that as he read it in the room where they lay dead the tears ran down his cheeks. Then the girl—she was but a girldressed herself in snowy white and placed in her breast a sweet bouquet of violets. Then the charcoal was lighted and the lovers laid themselves out for death, side by side, and passed dreamily into sleep, from sleep to death, and from death to judgment. It is not a moral story, it is not a new story. I have told it simply as it happened.— George R. Sims, in London Referee.