‘Well, have you got the key to the puzzle?’ said Griffiths, as we were leaving the house. ‘This man, whose opulence causes surprise even here, where everything is pomp and splendour and extravagance—this man is simply a gambler. We have still got in England some samples of those characters of the bygone century. After Charles II. left to his people the terrible gambling mania, to be a gamester became, as it were, an avowable profession. You know all that has been said of the youth of the Prince of Wales, of his passion for gambling, which for him had such terrible consequences. The most deplorable effect of this passion was to gather around his royal highness a set of people whose bow it would have taken some courage to acknowledge outside the precincts of Carlton House. It was sufficient to be a gambler, and what they called a magnificent gambler, to have the doors of the royal residence thrown open to you. These gentlemen, after the journeys they made annually through England, much as the magistrates went on circuit each session, as a rule took their flight thence for their European tours. They brought back immense harvests. Mr. Raily and his guest, Mr. O’Bearn, belong to the number.
‘Mr. Raily was born at Bath, that city enjoying the foremost reputation among our celebrities of fashion. Having started life with small means, he modelled himself upon a certain Mr. Nash, his predecessor in that career. That personage, who was called Beau Nash, was for forty years the arbiter of all that was elegant at Bath. His authority in that respect was boundless, and his verdicts without appeal. They finally gave him the sobriquet of ‘the King of Bath.’ In imitation of his master, Mr. Raily posed as the prince of the drawing-rooms and boudoirs. He, however, soon grew weary of more or less romantic love-adventures, and began to cast about for something more profitable. From his native city, he went to the capitals of the United Kingdom and then to those of Europe. He exploited them very cleverly and very luckily. At present, he has just returned from St. Petersburg. He has brought back from it all the gold plate you saw, the profusion of pearls and diamonds which convey the impression of his being a jeweller, and in addition to all this, it is said, a credit of a million of florins at the banker Arnstein’s. All this seems, indeed, most fabulous. Let us trust that there will not be a verification of the old proverb: “He who wants to make a fortune in a month is generally hanged during the first week.”’
Mr. Raily had a somewhat longer shrift than that, because it was fully three years before I met with him again, and then it was in Paris. But all his wealth was gone, and all the brilliant illusions, if ever he fostered any, were replaced by the most sombre reality. When he called upon me, there was no longer the confidence resulting from well-filled pockets, but the saddening humility of an empty stomach. I had scarcely time to question him; he forestalled my queries by telling me that everything was gone.
‘Furniture, plate, diamonds, your infernal “Salon des Étrangers” has swallowed every bit of them,’ he said, and then he gave me a description of the quickly following phases of the life of a gambler. ‘I have exhausted everything,’ he wound up; ‘look at that bracelet, it is made of the hair of my wife; it would have gone the road of the rest, if your pawnbrokers would have condescended to lend me a crown on it.’
‘But, Mr. Raily, why did you not apply to all those celebrities you entertained so right royally at Vienna?’
‘I have written to all; I have not had an answer from any.’
I offered him some pecuniary assistance, and a few years later I learnt that this man whose lavishness had astonished Vienna itself at the period of the Congress, and at whose board royalty had sat, had died of starvation.
* * * * *
Since his gambling adventure I had often seen Z——ki. The disaster and my attempts to minimise the consequences had undoubtedly drawn us closer together. After a dinner at the ‘Empress of Austria,’ he proposed to take me to a ball which had recently been established in a newly-erected, magnificent building, called the Apollo Hall. In a few moments we were on our way thither.
Everything projected at that period in Vienna bore the grand stamp worthy of the time and of the guests intended to be honoured. In spite of this, to convey anything like an accurate idea of the beauty of the new establishment would require a writer capable of reproducing some of the chapters of the Arabian Nights, which delighted our youth. The Apollo Hall, the work of M. Moreau, the French architect, is, no doubt one of the most curious constructions of the capital of Austria. The interior, occupying an enormous space, contained sumptuous galleries and halls like those of a palace, and was practically in keeping with the noble and tasteful proportions of the outside. Emerging from these galleries, one came gently upon the rustic arbours of a garden, and from these upon a Turkish kiosk, and further on still upon a Lapland hut. Gravelled walks, bordered by magnificent greensward planted with roses and fragrant plants, lent throughout a most charming variety. In the centre of the huge supper-room, there was an immense rock, whence, from among flowers, there sprang a fall of natural water into basins teeming with various kinds of fish. Every style of architecture had its ordained part in this huge space, and everything calculated to please the eye had been brought to bear upon the enhancing of these styles; such as, for instance, the glint of innumerable candles on thousands of different-coloured crystal sconces. Farther on, the whole became chastened by alabaster lamps shedding their gentle light, and inviting the more reposeful guests. And while without the snow covered the earth, within spring seemed to have come once more, bringing the most delightful scent of its earliest harbingers.