Given this progressive disfiguring of humankind, it is hardly odd if the first-order races have made sport compulsory and that this measure finds vociferous, intelligent supporters everywhere.
However, has it made any difference? It would be risky to say it had. In olden times sport, like poetry, was the preserve of the nobility. Nowadays the bulk of the bourgeoisie devotes hours each week to sport. Some sporting activities have even reached the more undernourished layers of our society. A new kind of citizen has been spawned who can fly through the air, leap from one mountain to another, and scrutinize the mysteries at the bottom of the sea. The offspring of this new kind of life, even as children, act like people who’ve retired from sport. Standing by the long, luminous sweep of the Baie des Anges — the name of Nice’s bay — their parents present a profile of undoubted sporting beauty. To my mind a sporting man, in his cyclist’s pants, knitted t-shirt, and spiked shoes could be a fully fledged Apollo; I likewise believe that this sporting gentleman, dressed like an ordinary mortal, opposite a roulette wheel, is as much a caricature as a poet at a poetry festival. And, indeed, wasn’t Apollo plotting to kill off such romantic, blood-tingling activities?
Sport would be a wonderful thing if it didn’t so damage the stomach and the mind. No sportsman has a proper appetite. There’s no sporting type who doesn’t have manias of the highest order. Sport is in the hands of doctors and health specialists whose professional business is the torture of humanity. Sport is led by doctors and hygienists when it should really be led by chefs. The purpose of sport is to create hunger and ensure that, when faced by a dozen oysters, the human species will tear its hair out and flagellate itself. These remarks of mine are old-fashioned and traditional, but I don’t believe they could be more reasonable or more right than they are. One should reject as fake all other interpretations of sport, especially scientific, sociological, or aesthetic interpretations. I know that the future of wise men in this era belongs to clouds of unknowing and silent shadows. It makes no difference. When all is said and done, before the touchstone of human physical guile, namely, a gaming table, the people who perform most brilliantly are those who can prove, quite genuinely, that they have eaten oysters by the dozen and snails by the hundred.
Leading intellectuals, after studying the different shapes of the human species, have boldly concluded that there’s nothing like being rich if you want to be ugly. It’s an amenable verdict many would willingly accept. It is, above all, a comforting conclusion. They even say that all the inventions the bourgeoisie dreams up to transform the human body into something irresistibly sweet and tempting are only clear proof of the deficiencies of that class, but these studies do have a terrible defect — they are scientific. These conclusions are lacking. Studying the shape of humanity within a public university is at the very least to follow an antiquated method. They should take the trouble to come as far as the Municipal Casino and take an unbiased look. Anatole France, who made this pilgrimage and who acquired some experience, boasted that he mistook marchionesses for bawds and vice versa. Such confusion is easily explained — no doubt about that. The fact is that in terms of three or four things — beauty, money, cruelty, and frailty — a motley human mixture is easily engineered. Finery, masks, and differences fall away. Everyone is, more or less, made of the same clay. Men and women, we are equally and fatefully deformed, lumpy and hollow-cheeked. We are ugly, unremittingly ugly …
Fortunately, now and then, never in excess, we are pleasant enough …
In Hyères, Cannes, Nice, and at many points of the Côte d’Azur something is still remiss in the way in which they interpret municipal politics and bureaucracy. It would be futile to place high hopes in the principality of Monaco where one scents the purist fragrance of a sacred union. There are no parties, no debates, no different ways of seeing things. The country’s physics are plain enough: there is roulette in Monaco. Every time the ball rolls, it produces five and a half per cent. This money must be distributed. A genuine prince oversees the bookkeeping. A small Council of Ministers looks after the bureaucracy. Roulette provides enough for the Monegasques not to pay taxes, do military service or, in a word, suffer any of the burdens that belonging to a community usually entails. Roulette pays the bureaucrat, the police force, the firemen, and park attendants. To ensure he doesn’t doze on the job, the prince is obliged to employ an expert. Administrators control the profits from gaming with immaculate honesty. Mothers and fathers bring their children up painstakingly in the hope they can make them resourceful croupiers. The weapons deployed by this aristocracy are roulette rakes and baccarat cards.
I don’t know if you know the country, it is quite wonderful. The principality is located on the back of a mountain that advances into the sea, leaving in its wake two bays as natural as a couple of seashells: W. Monaco is in the west bay, Monte Carlo in the east. An underground tunnel links the principality’s two towns. It is a very uneven configuration. From the sea, the principality seems to be on a very steep incline. Houses rise above one another, decked out in white. In the foreground palm trees and gardens hide buildings and palaces. Beyond them an Italianate terrace of houses — large stretches of wall, small green windows, and simple, pretty roofs — acts like a fan. The mountain plunges precipitously into whiteness. It is a mountain with dramatic rocks: fluorescent and purple, yellow and gray. At dusk, these rocks’ reflections in the becalmed sea give the water the most wonderful postcard hues. There are no strident notes. The houses are mirrored in the water and the palm trees and blossoming agave sway in the soft wind. In the long term, this gaming room silence nurtures enervating feverishness and a curious thirst for the impossible. To amuse the people who don’t require this kind of complex aphrodisiac in order to live, they should temper the silence with some sort of entertainment. One ought, for example, be able to hear a distant explosion. Then ordinary folk could remark, concealing their horror: “Another gambler must have committed suicide.”
Currently everything is a little too innocuous from a cinematic point of view. That’s an old, clichéd adjective but it is exactly right: this is a cinematic country. Magnificent gardens above a balustrade, mansions well located in their own moonlight, vistas contrived for a very special honeymoon. In my time cinema was like that and films were sublime. I imagine they still are. These luscious memories have left you a set of hidden images that spring into life at the sight of these postcards. The country appeals because it has been filmed so often.
Parallel to this conventional life is the everyday life of the locals who now live off roulette, in the same way they previously lived off fishing and in more ancient times off pirating and adventure. The people of the sea of Genoa have a long history and a passionate love of freedom. The Monegasques are the last representatives of a past that has gone forever. Even today they can afford the luxury of not paying rates or taxes, of not doing military service, of not pleasing everyone, and doing whatever they feel like. They are among the happy, blissful few left on this earth. They make you envious, but we should be frank: they deserve it. They have worked out how to evolve quickly and have tried not to upset anyone: perfect pirates or honest merchants in the days of medieval cut-and-thrust, patient, humble fishermen under absolute monarchies, and with the gradual spread of enlightenment and welfare, they have finally become the honest exploiters of human frailty.