‘But you don’t believe in putting something into your own pocket—ha, ha. Nor in taking something out of your neighbor’s. Well it is robbery. It makes me so mad sometimes to see how these things are done: but here we are at the Bella; let’s just in and overlook the game.’
They entered a very large apartment where all the conveniences and implements for gambling were found arrayed according to the most approved style. Nothing was wanted to render this establishment equal to its ‘illustrious predecessors’ in the old world and in the Atlantic cities.
Here were refreshments offered to all comers free of cost. Wines were freely poured out and segars presented, so that ‘good old-fashioned hospitality’ was never displayed in these degenerate days so bountifully as Monteagle saw it exhibited at the famous Bella Union.
A large table devoted to the game of Rouge et Noir invited the attention of our two friends. A Californian of swart countenance and sinister aspect, here deals Monte for the benefit of the greenhorns who throng around the golden piles in momentary expectation of seeing them flit into their own pockets, but though riches have wings, they do not fly in that direction. In lieu of that the few acres which the ‘Squatteroez’ have left them, go rapidly out of their possession. Then the Faro players were thronging around the table, certain of a change of luck next time, and verifying the poet’s declaration that ‘man never is, but always to be blest.’ Each sagacious adventurer fancies himself a perfect La Place or Newton in calculation, and believes that he has, at last, mastered the complex elaboration of chances, and shall eventually ‘bust the bank.’ Unmitigated ass! Even though your power of calculation surpassed that of Zerah Colburn, you would be sure to lose, even admitting that the game was fairly played.
But watch with the eyes of an Argus, and think with the profundity of a Fourier, and that placid, smooth-tongued arbiter of Fortune, will look you in the eyes and cheat you out of every farthing you have got.
On all the tables except the last which we have described, piles of yellow oro, like veritable offerings upon these altars of Mammon, make the heart of avarice ache, ay, and infect those who are not very greedy of lucre with a touch of the yellow fever. Gold in dollars, gold in five dollar pieces, gold in ten dollar coins, gold in twenty dollar pieces, gold in slugs, gold in lumps, gold in bars, gold in dust—gold in every and any shape meets the dazzled eyes of visitors, look where you will; and those bland gentlemen who cry ‘Make de game, gentlemens—No moe, the game is made,’ and who so liberally furnish the sparkling wine gratis, stand ready to hand over to you any or all of those glittering piles as soon as you win them!
During all this time, bursts of delicious music float through the apartment, the harmonies of Bellini and Mendelsohn contrasting strangely with the hoarse oaths of some loser not yet grown sufficiently hardened to stifle his emotions as he thinks of his poor wife and little children whom he has robbed of their support by his last venture.
Monteagle looked with a shudder at the scene presented to his eyes, as he entered this spacious apartment devoted to the goddess of Ruin, and glittering with gilded baits to serve the purposes of those who, in the worst sense of the terms might be called ‘fishers of men.’
An impression far from agreeable was made upon the mind of the youth when he noticed that Blodget who had been recommended to his attention by the junior member of the firm in whose service he was—not only evinced no emotion at the fearful scenes enacted before him, but that he also replied to the familiar addresses of the practical gamblers like one who had long been on terms of intimacy with them. But the impression gradually wore off under the influence of the music, to the soothing effects of which Monteagle was peculiarly susceptible, and a glass of excellent wine tendered him by an attendant contributed to fortify his spirits and prepare him for at least, enduring the strange events that were taking place around him.
One very genteel middle-aged man, apparently a Mexican, passed by them with a smile upon his countenance, on his way to the door. Pride was evidently struggling with despair, for he had just lost his all, and that smile sat upon his cadaverous features like a sunbeam upon a charnel house. Nevertheless, he walked erect, and maintained a certain air of dignity, till he passed the portal, as some men have done while going to the scaffold.