Frederick Treves

“ The bathroom door was just ajar, but the very faint glimmer of the lamp did not enable me to penetrate the darkness that filled it. I kept my eye fixed on the entry when, in a moment, to my horror, the door began to open. The sight was terrifying in the extreme. My heart was thumping to such a degree that I thought its beats must be audible. I felt a deadly sinking in my stomach, while the skin of my back and neck seemed to be wrinkling and to be dragged up as might be a shirt a man is drawing over his head. There is no panic like the panic felt in a dream. ”

“ Thrown up on the summit of Gorbio is the square tower of the old castle; but it is so fused with stables and poor dwellings that, but for its exquisite window, it might be a hayloft over a cow-house. Mule-paths are mixed up with vaulted passages and narrow lanes with cellar stairs, a prison wall with a grilled window has become the wall of a cottage, bits of a feudal fortress have been melted up with hovels, a fine arch of stone leads to a donkey-shed, the portal of a chapter house to a mean kitchen, while the hall of a palazzo has become a pen for goats. ”

“ The rest of Merrick's life up to the time that I met him at Liverpool Street Station was one dull record of degradation and squalor. He was dragged from town to town and from fair to fair as if he were a strange beast in a cage. A dozen times a day he would have to expose his nakedness and his piteous deformities before a gaping crowd who greeted him with such mutterings as "Oh! what a horror! What a beast!" He had had no childhood. He had had no boyhood. He had never experienced pleasure. He knew nothing of the joy of living nor of the fun of things. ”

“ Dévote, rises the great rock of Monaco. On its summit stand the palace, the fortress and the little town—all three so staid, so grey, so very, very old—just as they have stood in company through some six hundred years. On the other side of the chapel, on rising ground, lies Monte Carlo, modern in every fibre of its being, a town that has sprung up in a night like a gaudily-tinted fungus, a brilliant, vivid place, slashed with colour like a jester’s coat, as ephemeral as a rainbow, since any change in the public taste may cause it to fade into nothingness. ”

“ It is needless to say that the Receiving Room is not always tragical, not always the scene of alarms and disorders, not always filled with wild-eyed folk nor echoing the scuffle of heavy feet and the moans of the suffering. It may be as quiet as a room in a convent. I have seen it so many a time, and particularly on a Sunday morning in the heyday of summer. Then the sun, streaming through the windows, may illumine the figure of the nurse as she sits on the awful sofa. She has her spectacles on, and is busy with some white needlework. ”

“ LA TURBIE: THE OLD BAKEHOUSE.
Let such as are tired of this Vanity Fair and of its make-believe palaces, climb up to the hill town. As they pass through the old gateway they enter into a world that was, into a town where the streets are silent and the houses homely and venerable. The blaze of clashing colours is forgotten, for all here is grey. The bold, imperious purple of the sea is changed for the tender forget-me-not blue of a strip of sky above the roofs. The dazzle of the sun is beyond the gate, but within are shadows as comforting as “the shadow of a rock in a weary land.” ”

“ WHAT a strange company they are, these old patients who crowd into the surgeon’s memory after a lifetime of busy practice! There they stand, a confused, impersonal assembly, so illusive and indistinct as to be little more than shadows. Behind them is a dim background of the past—a long building with many windows that I recognize as my old hospital, a consulting room with familiar furniture, an operating theatre, certain indefinite sick-rooms as well as a ward in which are marshalled a double row of beds with blue and white coverlets. ”

“ Below the blue of the sky is a cinder-grey slope of bare cliff that dips into the faded green of the olive belt and the sprightlier green of the pines; then comes a strip of claret-red tinged with yellow, which marks the terrace of the autumn vines, and at the very foot are the deep shadows by the banks of the stream.
The Careï follows the valley all the way. It begins among the vast silence of the everlasting hills and ends by running under the tramlines and the bandstand at Mentone. The road mounts up the west bank of the valley by spasmodic turns and twists. ”

“ At such times he would wonder how the tide stood in the estuary at home. Was the flood swirling up from the Channel, bringing with its clear eddies the smell of the ocean as it hurried in and out among the piles of the old pier? Or was it the time of the ebb when stretches of damp sand come out at the foot of cliffs and when ridges of rock, dripping with cool weed, emerge once more into the sun? What a moment for a swim! ”

“ It is quiet, for the world has left it alone. It stands by the side of the Great Corniche Road, but those who pass by in an eddy of dust heed it not. One might walk through it many times, from gate to gate, without meeting a living creature.
Yet at the foot of the hill on which La Turbie stands is Monte Carlo, the most modern of modern abodes of men. A town without walls, lying scattered in all directions like a great drop of bright paint that has fallen on a rock and spattered it. ”

“ THE ROCK OF MONACO MONACO is a bold, assertive mass of rock—long, narrow and blunt—which thrusts itself out into the sea, as if to show that it held the ocean in contempt and cared nothing for either winds or waves. The sea has tried its strength against it since the world began, but Monaco has ever remained bland and indifferent. The rock is cut off from the mainland by a gorge through which the road to Nice slinks by as if glad to escape. The sides of Monaco are everywhere precipitous, except towards the east. ”

“ Merrick, I may say, was now one of the most contented creatures I have chanced to meet. More than once he said to me: "I am happy every hour of the day." This was good to think upon when I recalled the half-dead heap of miserable humanity I had seen in the corner of the waitingroom at Liverpool Street. Most men of Merrick's age would have expressed their joy and sense of contentment by singing or whistling when they were alone. Unfortunately poor Merrick's mouth was so deformed that he could neither whistle nor sing. ”

“ It is a street of the Middle Ages, little changed and little spoiled. It is a mystery street full of romance and suggestion. It makes one draw one’s breath. It recalls so vividly a score of tales of mediæval days; for it is just that narrow, winding, dim and haunting lane where thrilling things always happened—stabbings in the dark, pursuits with torches and the clang of arms, whisperings of cloaked conspirators, the beckoning hand and the lover with the panting lady in the hood.
The business of Grasse, as is well known, is the making of scent, soap and refined oil. ”

“ The duchess, who was a lady of prompt convictions, exclaimed, "Ridiculous; that was never your hat!" The butler could say no more: he was convicted of error. The duchess then seized upon the only other hat on the table and held it at arm's length. "Whose is this?" she cried. "Heavens, it is the shabbiest hat I ever saw! It cannot be yours." (It was not.) Looking inside, she added, "What a filthy hat! It is enough to poison the house." Handing it to the butler as if it had been an infected rag, she exclaimed, "Take it away and burn it!" ”

“ It is dim, for it passes under buildings, like a heading in a mine. It winds about just as the alley in a story ought to wind and finally bursts out into the light in an unexpected place. It is to some extent cut through rock, so that in places it is hard to tell which is house and which is rock.
There is a piazza in Roquebrune, a real public square, a place, with the name of the Place des Frères. It lies at the edge of the cliff where it is protected by a parapet from which stretches a superb view of the green slope to the road and, beyond the road, of Cap Martin and the sea. ”

“ I ran some way from the bungalow before I stopped. I was like a man saved from the scaffold as the very axe was about to drop. There was a gentle air blowing, cool and kindly. Above was a sky of stars, while in the east the faint light of the dawn was appearing behind the Indian village.
For a moment or two I watched the door leading from the bathroom, expecting to see the man with the pick creep out, but the anticipation of the sight was so dread that I turned away and walked to the other side of the bungalow. ”

“ The most impressive view of Eze is obtained from the road that leads from La Turbie to Cap d’Ail, at about the time of the setting of the sun. It is then seen from afar as a tiny town on a crag among a tumbled mass of mountains which lie deep in shade. It is the only sign of human habitation in the waste. The sun shines full upon it.
Against the dark background of pines it appears as a brilliant object in silver grey. Its houses, its church and its castle are as clean cut as a many-pointed piece of plate lying upon folds of dark green velvet. No visible road leads to it. ”

“ Merrick talked of this pantomime for weeks and weeks. To him, as to a child with the faculty of make-believe, everything was real; the palace was the home of kings, the princess was of royal blood, the fairies were as undoubted as the children in the street, while the dishes at the banquet were of unquestionable gold. He did not like to discuss it as a play but rather as a vision of some actual world. When this mood possessed him he would say: “I wonder what the prince did after we left,” or “Do you think that poor man is still in the dungeon?” ”

“ THE SENTRY TOWER ON THE RAMPE.
MONACO: THE DRAWBRIDGE GATE, 1533.
The winter visitor is apt to pity the Monégasques for their narrow streets which keep out the life-giving sun. When the mistral blows he has less contempt for the sheltering lane and as the end of May is reached—when the sun is shunned as if it were mustard gas—he bolts across the square, like a man under fire, and diving into the cool, dim ways of Monaco thanks his creator for the blessing of shade. ”