There
was an Englishwoman here, one of those indestructible modern ladies who
breakfast off an ether cocktail and half a dozen aspirins and feel all
the better for it, and who, one day, found herself losing rather heavily
at the tables. "Another aspirin is going to turn my luck," she thought,
and therewith swallowed surreptitiously her last tabloid of the panacea.
Not unobserved, however; for straightway two elegant gentlemen--they
might have been Russian princes--pounced upon her and led her to that
underground operating-room where a kindly physician is in perennial
attendance. He brushed aside her explanations.
"It would be a thousand pities for so charming a lady to poison herself.
But since you wish to take that step, why choose the Casino which has a
reputation to keep up? Are there not hotels----"
"I tell you it was only aspirin."
"Alas, we are sufficiently familiar with that tale! Now, Madam, let us
not lose a moment! It is a question of life and death."
"Aspirin, I tell you----"
"Kindly submit, or the three of us will be obliged to employ force."
The stomach-pump was produced.
It is the drawback of all sea-side places that half the landscape is
unavailable for purposes of human locomotion, being covered by useless
water. Mentone is more unfortunate than most of them, for its Hinterland
is so cloven and contorted that unless you keep on the main roads, or
content yourself with short but pleasant strolls, you will soon find all
progress barred by some natural obstruction.
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