German students who, by extravagant living, encumbered themselves with debt, and who were afraid to apply at home for more money, came hither to make enough at gambling to restore themselves. They never did it. M. Benezet was not paying forty thousand dollars a year rent for the privilege of running a game at which improvident and extravagant young men could make up their folly—not he. His game was to take what they had left, without knowing or caring what became of them afterward.
The most common legend of them all is of the young man who walked calmly into the room with one hundred Napoleons, all he had left, and staked one piece after another, and lost invariably. Finally there was but one left. Turning to his friend, he remarked calmly, “This is my life I am wagering.” He put it upon the black, the wheel revolved, he lost.
Without a word this calm young man went out, and hung himself with his handkerchief to a tree, where his inanimate body was found the next morning.
This young man is very plentiful in Baden-Baden, though not much more so than the same kind of a fellow who, staking his last gold piece, draws a pistol from his pocket, and shoots himself at the table, the croupier paying no attention to it, and going on with the game as though it was a regular part of it, and an everyday occurrence.
Tibbitts frowned upon this legend severely, holding it to be unworthy of credence. “The young man,” said Tibbitts, “would have gone out and pawned his revolver for ten dollars, and taken another hack at it.”
And then this young man with a lively imagination went on to show that no matter how desperate the situation there is always a chance to get out. His story was to this effect:
A young New Yorker had gone to Paris with some thousands of dollars given him by his indulgent father, that he might see the world and study the languages. He studied French with a young grisette whose acquaintance he had made, and a very pleasant life he lived, till one morning the two discovered that they hadn’t a dollar between them left, that he had spent in three months with his syren what was sufficient to have supported him decently for three years. He dared not send home for more money, he could not leave his friend (that’s what they call it), and they had not enough to buy another meal.
The pawn shops were resorted to, till everything they had was gone and starvation stared them in the face.
They wept over it, and finally came to a conclusion. They loved each other dearly, they could not live apart, and so they decided to die together. She rushed out and pawned her last pair of stockings to purchase charcoal; they closed all the cracks in the room and lighted the coal, that its fumes might kill them in the regular Parisian style.
The girl died, but life was left in the young man. He rose and broke a window with a boot—no, he had pawned his boots—but with something, anyhow, and let in fresh air, which saved his life.