The acrobat told me all this without any affectation, in so natural and decided a tone that I did not feel justified in pitying his fate. But since I wished to know what sentiment could survive, in a being of such mediocre intellectual culture, his resignation to the sacrifice of life, I said to him with some interest—
“I quite understand; dear Monsieur Walter, that the applause you receive seems to you, whilst it lasts, a sufficient reward for your past sufferings and approaching end. But, tell me, when the fever of the circus has passed away, in your hours of leisure and solitude like this one, do you not curse your destiny?”
The Englishman smiled quietly.
“I have,” he replied, “a specific against ennui—a passion which saves me from reflection. I gamble, sir, gamble madly for whole nights at a time. I stake the thousands of francs which the managers [p252] pay me every month; worse than that, I have staked my skeleton, and lost it!”
The terrace of the café, where we were talking, had become empty through the lateness of the hour; the waiters had already closed the front, and were taking in the chairs.
The Serpent-man rose; and as I stared at him with wonder in my eyes, he added—
“We are driven from here, sir. Will you accompany me to my hotel? I will tell you how it occurred.”
He led me to a family boarding-house in the Rue du Colisée, which has no customers except the acrobats who pass through Paris. J. H. Walter occupied a fairly comfortable room on the first floor. He lighted a lamp, and [p253] when we were seated, facing each other, he continued his story in these words—
“It happened about five years ago I was performing in London, and every evening I played poker in the taverns with an ill luck that would not change. All my savings were lost, and when I had no money left the idea occurred to me to insert an advertisement in The Era (you know that is our professional newspaper), in which I said—