satisfaction of knowing that I had my return ticket to Nice. So there it
is, my friends! You will say, of course: "What a mean thing to do! We are
so poor, while he out there plays roulette." Perfectly just, and I give you
permission to slay me. But I personally am much pleased with myself.
Anyway, now I can tell my grandchildren that I have played roulette, and
know the feeling which is excited by gambling.

Beside the Casino where roulette is played there is another swindle--the
restaurants. They fleece one frightfully and feed one magnificently. Every
dish is a regular work of art, before which one is expected to bow one's
knee in homage and to be too awe-stricken to eat it. Every morsel is rigged
out with lots of artichokes, truffles, and nightingales' tongues of all
sorts. And, good Lord! how contemptible and loathsome this life is with its
artichokes, its palms, and its smell of orange blossoms! I love wealth and
luxury, but the luxury here, the luxury of the gambling saloon, reminds one
of a luxurious water-closet. There is something in the atmosphere that
offends one's sense of decency and vulgarizes the scenery, the sound of the
sea, the moon.

Yesterday--Sunday--I went to the Russian church here. What was peculiar was
the use of palm-branches instead of willows; and instead of boy choristers
a choir of ladies, which gives the singing an operatic effect. They put
foreign money in the plate; the verger and beadle speak French, and so
on....

Of all the places I have been in hitherto Venice has left me the loveliest
memories. Rome on the whole is rather like Harkov, and Naples is filthy.
And the sea does not attract me, as I got tired of it last November and
December.