But alone in the sitting room, Emilie herself crossed to the window and did just what she had forbidden Mistral to do. She stared out into the twilight trying to see what lay outside. She too was impatient that the night must pass before she could see more.

When their evening meal was finished, Emilie retired to her room, and when Jeanne came to her to help her to undress, asking her solicitously if she would like a glass of milk or a hot brick in her bed, she sent her away saying she wanted only to be left alone.

And when at last this wish was realised, Emilie laid on a chair a heavy despatch box. It was a big casket covered in purple leather and without the big gilt coronet which adorned her other luggage.

Nevertheless it was a distinguished piece of luggage and almost without realising it Emilie’s hand caressed the leather before she drew a key from her purse and turned it in the lock. The box was filled not with state papers for which it had been originally intended, but strangely enough with scrapbooks, made of brown paper such as were sold for children to stick transfers in and young ladies their valentines.

Slowly, with what appeared to be almost a tenderness, Emilie drew the books from the leather box. She chose one and opened it. It was filled with newspaper cuttings. There were six scrapbooks equally filled with cuttings dating back for eighteen years and all referring to one place and one person.

The authorities of Monte Carlo would have been interested if they could have seen Emilie’s scrap books, for they constituted in themselves an almost unique history of the rise of the town. At the beginning of the book the cuttings referred to events occurring at irregular intervals, sometimes two or three months elapsing between each one, and then they referred only to the Grand Duke Ivan of Russia.

As the years passed, the cuttings were more numerous.

François Blanc, the genius of Homburg, had been invited to set up a Casino in Monaco and a new name was to be chosen. The natives called it ‘Les Spelugues’, but this was not considered suitable as it had an improper meaning, and finally it was decided that the Casino and the new town which was being built around it should be called Monte Carlo.

Now there was hardly a day when a fresh cutting had not been added to the book – cuttings describing the beauties and the importance of the new buildings, cuttings mentioning the amusements, galas, balls, fêtes, concerts and the games such as whist, écarté, piquet, faro, boston and reverse, as well as roulette and trente-et-quarante, which were being played in the Casino.