‘No, friend, but I’m awaking from a sleep which I wish had been my last one. S—— and the Comte B—— entered the room immediately after you left it. They relighted the candles which you extinguished: we played all night, and I have lost two millions of roubles, for which I gave them my bills. Here, look for yourself.’
I stepped to the window and drew the curtains aside: the floor was littered with cards, which they must have got in the hotel, and the ruin of the young fellow had been accomplished before daylight.
‘This can only be a joke on their part, dear comte; make your mind easy. They could not possibly harbour the thought of despoiling a friend in that manner. They are also my friends, although I should certainly cease to consider them as such if they hesitated for a moment to destroy every trace of such a disgraceful night.’ Having said this, I immediately left him, to go to S——, to whom I submitted the same argument in order to persuade him to waive his claim. I said much more; I pointed out the consequences to himself if such a story came to the ears of the Emperor Alexander. Referring to the sovereign’s well-known dislike of any kind of gaming, I did not disguise from him the possibility of the emperor taking up the matter personally, with a view of preventing such deplorable transactions in the future, and that he, S——, might be selected, not without some justification, as an example for the sake of enforcing the lesson. All my efforts to bring him to reason and to arouse a feeling of equity were in vain. He positively derided what he was pleased to call my sentimental pathos, and ended up by proposing a game for my cabriolet and horses, so that I might be enabled to preach from experience. I felt disgusted, and left him.
From the military man I proceeded to the diplomatist, who proved to be much more frigid than the other. With many fine phrases he tried to convince me that it was not disloyal or dishonourable to wake up a young man of twenty-one at midnight in order to despoil him of his fortune in a couple of hours.
‘Is it worth while to make so much ado about the loss of a few boumashkis-boumashkis?‘—being the name of Russian paper money—he said. ‘We have only to look around us to find the same thing going on every day in another shape. You have merely to count the claimants to thrones they lost because the game went against them. Do you think people pay any heed to them? You may have noticed a gentleman who left when you came in. That’s the Marquis de Brignoli. He came to Vienna to claim the independence of Genoa. The ambassador of a republic which is at its last gasp, he has treated the Congress to a most energetic protest, which you may read if you like, for I have it here. In spite of his logic, M. de Metternich politely bowed him out, and Genoa is to be given to Piedmont, which has won it, and means to keep it. Venice disappears in spite of its ancient wisdom. Is it being swallowed up by the Adriatic? Not at all. It’s Austria that has won it, and means to keep it. Malta only claims from the Congress its rock and arms to defend itself against all comers: England, it is told, has won it, and means to keep it. Prussia gains Saxony; Sweden gains Norway; Russia gains Poland. Europe in Vienna sits round a table covered with a green cloth; she is gambling for states, and a cast of the diplomatic dice involves the loss or the gain of a hundred thousand, nay, of a million, of heads.[88] Why should not I win a few bits of paper when luck favours me?’
‘But from your friend, Monsieur le Comte?’
‘They are very scrupulous about relatives here, not to say about friends, when it comes to the appropriation of thrones, aren’t they. No, no, all this is so much nonsense. Figaro resolved the problem long ago: “What’s worth taking, is worth keeping.”’
What answer could I make to such maxims, except to treat them with contempt? I left him and went back to Z—— to inform him of the failure of my efforts.
‘I felt certain it would be so,’ he said. ‘The sting of a serpent is less cruel than the ingratitude of a friend. There is but one way with people like this, and I’ll employ it.’
He was quite himself now; he dressed and went out to call upon the grand-chamberlain, Narischkine, who was his superior in virtue of his Court charge. He intended to inform him of the disaster that had befallen him, and the means he meant to use for redress. He would not allow me to go with him; and I tried my horses by myself. I could have wished them, in their rapid course, to carry me right away from the painful impressions of the last few hours.