13
Now that the battle is joined, now that the player has done what he could to summon and welcome luck, there is nothing left for him to do but wait; for luck, when all is said, will remain the supreme power that pronounces the final verdict, the formidable and inevitable unknown factor in every combination. The best of systems cannot overcome an abnormal and pitiless run of bad luck which makes you stake incessantly on the losing colour. A run like this, without favourable intermittences, is extremely rare but always possible. It corresponds, for that matter, with the extraordinary strokes of good luck, which seem more frequent only because they attract more attention. From time to time we see a man, or rather let me say a woman—for it is nearly always female players who have these inspirations—walk up to the table and with a high hand and not the least hesitation gamble en plein or en cheval, on a transversale or carré, and win time after time, as though she saw beforehand where the ball would fall. These moments of intuition are always very brief; and, if the player insists or grows stubborn, she will soon lose whatever she has won. It is none the less true that, when we observe this very obvious and striking phenomenon, we wonder whether there is not something more in it than mere coincidence. When all is said, can luck be anything other than a passing and dazzling intuition of what will flash into actuality before everybody’s eyes a second later? Is not the compartment which does not yet contain the little ball, but which in an instant will snap it up and hold it, is not this compartment already, somewhere, a thing of the present and even of the past? But these are questions which would lead us too far afield in space and time.