'Twenty-four,' said Henry. She had told him it was her age.
'Bien! Voilà huit louis!' she exclaimed, opening her purse of netted gold; and he took the eight coins and put them on number twenty-four. Eight notes for a thousand francs each remained on the even numbers. The other notes were in Henry's hip-pocket, a crushed mass.
Twenty-four won. It was nothing but black that morning. 'Mais c'est épatant!' murmured several on lookers anxiously.
A croupier counted out innumerable notes, and sundry noble and glorious gold plaques of a hundred francs each. Henry could not check the totals, but he knew vaguely that another three hundred pounds or so had accrued to him, on behalf of Cosette.
'I fancy red now,' he said, sighing.
And feeling a terrible habitué, he said to the croupier in French: 'Maximum. Rouge.'
'Maximum. Rouge,' repeated the croupier.
Instantly the red enclosure was covered with the stakes of a quantity of persons who had determined to partake of Henry's luck.
And red won; it was the number fourteen.
Henry was so absorbed that he did not observe a colloquy between two of the croupiers at the middle of the table. The bank was broken, and every soul in every room knew it in the fraction of a second.