Countess Bettina (Paperback)

This historic book may have numerous typos and missing text. Purchasers can download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. Not indexed. Not illustrated. 1895. Excerpt: ... CHAPTER IV. On Wilfulness, a Will, and a Way. By eight of an evening, in late May, Mentone is a quiet place, particularly if you venture into the side paths and ways, where you may pass a lagging pair, under the glimmering gas lamps, between the high walls of the villas. The Villa des Palmiers is removed from the town on the upper of the two roads (which join a mile farther) to Monaco. I strolled in its direction about half after eight, making certain that no one would question an Englishman's right to walk as his fancy led. The continental peoples expect us to walk with mad energy, at which, I believe, they smile. A Frenchman walks for effect to show his knickerbockers, or his jacket, which he likely has from a Bond Street tailor; a German, because he mixes poetry, or metaphysics with the art of stretching his muscles. To the English, their colonists, and the real Americans, not the lately naturalized ones, is 28 left the prerogative of exercise for the joy of it. Of course there are individual differences. I have known Frenchmen and Russians who are ardent pedestrians, out of the sense of delightful physical exertion in the air, and the action of the muscles. That evening, as I say, the roads about Mentone were strangely quiet, and I could be sure, whatever the outcome of my adventure, that nobody would trouble me, except, possibly, in the olive orchard in the slope back from the Villa des Palmiers. A quarter hour brought me to the high wall enclosing the villa, which showed, under the moon, with its yellow stucco, some twenty rods from the iron gate, now closed and barred, on the roadway. A man, probably the concierge, was peering through the bars as I passed, and I fancied he was observing me. At any rate I took the precaution to walk beyond the path ...