THE GREAT HALL.
A FEW LEGENDS.
gambling house to one company, or rather one man. Originally a Frenchman named Benezet had it, paying some forty thousand dollars a year for the privilege of plucking fools, and when he died, leaving an immense fortune, his son-in-law, Dupressoir, continued the business. The money received by the government for this privilege was appropriated to the beautifying of the city and the other mineral water resorts in the Grand Duchy.
The gambling was done in an immense building which is now the “Conversation-haus,” and, if its walls could speak, many a tale, comic and tragic, they could tell.
You are assailed with all sorts of legends concerning it. There was a lady, of what nationality was never known, a woman who commenced gambling at the age of thirty-six, who always came to the rooms closely veiled, whose face was never seen. She played so much money invariably, leaving the rooms when she had lost or won her limit. It was never ascertained where she lodged, even. For twenty years she came to the rooms twice each day, staking a Napoleon (four dollars) on each turn of the wheel till she had lost or won fifty, and when that loss or that winning was accomplished she glided out, only to reappear the next day.
There is a wild legend prevalent that this mysterious being’s lover had lost his fortune at the tables, and had blown his brains out as a fitting finish to his folly, and that there was an irresistible impulse that brought her to the scene of his death, and kept her there all her life.
What interested Tibbitts the most in this legend was the statement that the lover lost all his money, and then blew out his brains.
“Any man, or alleged man,” said Tibbitts, “who would lose a fortune at such a game as they played here, must have great faith in his marksmanship, to try to hit his brains, no matter how short the range.”