Pictures and the Picturegoer (Jan-Dec 1924)

60 Pictures and Pt'cfrjrepuer NOVEMBER 1924 MY TRIP ABROAD by Rudolph Valentino. (Continued from page 18.) we might sleep or eat. Wondering if the next turn of the road would bring us to some enchanted spot where we would rest for the night or fare in the middle of the day. Adventure. I thoroughly enjoyed it all, but I think that that was, perhaps, more than a little bit selfish of me. For it was rather too much for Natacha. ""The coming up and going down incessantly on serpentine mountain paths. The fact that wc went a matter of some 850 kilometres in thatbrief time and the further.f act, joyful to me, but not so joyful to her, that they have no speed laws here. You can go as fast as you want to go, and the consequences are on your head and no one else's. Naturally, in the town, you have to slow down a bit, but on the country roads you can go top speed — up to the very limit of your motor's capacity. My motor's capacity, I may say, was exceedingly good. Bourges, I must say, is where Phillippe the Beautiful and his Italian wife, an ",Este" or a " Medici," I forget which, lie buried. The Cathedral was closed as we speeded by, and as we wanted to make Nice in the evening, we kept on going. We had to go through Grenoble. The gods being* with us, we finallv arrived in Nice at nine o'clock in the evening — and no thanks to me, either, I was told in rather wobbly accents by Natacha. Derhaps she was right. As a matter * of fact, not onlythegodsbuttheroads were with me on my trip to Nice. The roads were exceptionally good and in each town there were huge posters where one can see the names and the directions without the bothersome slowing down and inquiring here and there, there and everywhere. The characters on the posters are fully six inches high, so that you can easily decipher them going ninety miles an hour — which is practically if not literally what I did. Oh, yes, and I had another help, too, a very great one. I flatter myself on my sense of direction, but perhaps I should first of all flatter the Royal Auto Club of Paris. This commendable arganisation made me a chartof the towns and roads. Each separate and individual road has a separate and individual number. Each separate and individual town has a red stone with the number of the road in black thereon, thus dramatically and definitely marking it. Even the roads play the Rouge et Noir ! For instance, the cities from Bourges to Grenoble number the Road No. 6. So, even if you pass the sign unseeing, if you take the wrong road, say No. 7 and look at the chart you see that you are wrong and are guided back to the right crossing. When I indulge in a slight fit of boast fulness about the eminent and dexterous fashion in which I navigated and circumnavigated the roads, if 1 may use a nautical term for motoring, I am gently but firmly reminded of the many and ingenious devices placed along the way to keep " a young man from going wrong." And honesty compels me to admit that I didn't deserve a great deal of credit. Only for the fact that I did not keep the car on the road when it had every appearance of leaving it, wheel by wheel. jVTatacha is nervous enough. All women all beautiful women, surely are highly, delicately and very finely organised. They are strung like a priceless Stradivarius. They respond as an apple tree responds to April breezes. But if Natacha had not had, as well, a nerve of steel and so genuine an appreciation for what she could see of the scenery as we sped through it, no doubt she would have been even more unstrung than she was. Natacha says she thinks the gods have nothing to do with motoring — and less to do with motorists of my particular genus, or specie, or whatever you call them. But the point of this night's writing is that we finally and securely arrived at the Chateau Juan Les Pins to-night at nine o'clock. The stir and welcome, the giving and taking of the story of our trip, the solicitude and mutual talk and excitement, I will tell when I write my diary to-morrow. It has been all that I could do to write what I have written here to-night. Natacha says that I seem to be possessed of and by this diary of mint ; that no doubt with ■ my last expiring breath I would inscribe some theory, some philosophy, or some detail, of the trip we are taking. For I have written this instalment to-night not only practiiCally but literally writhing with pain. My hands practically and literally refuse close. My index fingers are all but paralyzed. Natacha pricked my hand with a pin and I will swear that I couldn't feel it . . . all from grasping the wheel as I have been grasping it on our ride from Avignon and Paris. [ have callouses all over both hands and my shoulder and arm muscles arc horribly out of commission from the terrific pumping up and down in the narrow mountain passes. Somehow, I don't complain. The trip was joyously worth the pain, I feel now — and so is writing in this diary. Now I shall go to bed. And surely, surely I shall sleep to-night if never I have slept before. I can feel sleep drugging my weary eyes, until the lids close of their own accord and I have to open them again by sheer force of will. I can feel sleep creeping up, up, covering my limbs, my arms, my tired head, as though a warm garment were being drawn over me, softly, almost imperceptibly, obscuring me. Juan Les Pins, Nice, August 19th. \Y/e have had a delicious first day. One of the really pleasurable excitements of life is getting together ir a family group after the group has been separated and dispersed for a considerable period of time. Natacha's mother and father. " Muzzie " and " Uncle Dick " (Mr. and Mrs. Hudnut) came to Nice a year ago to rebuild and " do-over " the chateau which Uncle Dick had given over to the government as a hospital during the war. When he retired from business, they came to Nice to settle down largely because it .had long been a dream with them to do this very thing. They had lived on the Riviera off and on for years. (To be continued). Rudolph Valentino in his dressing room at Paramount studios during the filming of "Monsieur Beaucaire."