Does this mean that there is no such thing as a defensible method and that the most skilful calculations have not revealed a means of defeating Chance? In theory, I cannot bring myself to believe that baseless calculations will ever do what they have not done up to the present. It is none the less true that, in practice, we come upon some which struggle with fair success against ill-luck. For instance, a friend of mine, a British officer, has a system which he has been using for a long time and which yields astonishing results. It is, of course, a progression, the whole of whose virtue lies in an ingenious and very simple key that seems to act as a sort of talisman. I have not found this method in any of either the recognized or the catchpenny treatises. It has its dangers, like the others; it has its difficult moments, when, to save your anticipated profits and your earlier losses, you have to risk a rather large amount. But, if you prudently stop playing during runs which are too obstinately hostile, if you allow the storm to pass as it spreads over a large number of chances, you end by obtaining the necessary compensation. At any rate, it has never seriously failed my friend so far.
12
Nevertheless it must not be supposed that we have only to use this system blindly and automatically. As with other systems, a certain science, a certain experience, a certain deftness are indispensable. Though science and experience are evasive qualities here, fugitive and at the mercy of Chance, they are by no means illusory. The careful and experienced player understands how to approach and nurse his luck, or at least how not to thwart it. He guesses the beginning and the end of a favourable series. He foresees alternations and intermittences; and, when he does not succeed in grasping their rhythm, he prefers to abstain from playing, rather than encounter them inopportunely. He makes more than one mistake, but makes far fewer than those who, faithful to the very scientific theory of the absolute independence of each coup, back either colour at any moment. He does not surrender to the fixed rigidity of logic, he does not throw the gauntlet down to fate, he does not defy the animosity of fortune. He is never obstinate. He does not struggle on, sullenly, to his last coin, against an iniquitous run, in order to gain the bitter satisfaction of learning the utmost depths of his ill-luck and the injustice of fate. He has no self-conceit, no prejudices, no inflexible opinions. He is docile, plastic and accommodating. Devoid of all false shame, he cheerfully abandons his pretensions and pays court to fortune. He retraces his steps and retracts at fitting times. He stops, starts afresh, yields, tacks about, allows himself to be borne upon the tide and comes safely to harbour, while the arrogant, overbold and headstrong pilot founders in deep water.
Beyond all else, he studies the character and temper of the table at which he takes his seat, for each table has its psychology, its habits, its history, which vary from day to day and yet by the end of the year form a homogeneous whole wherein all temporary errors, all anomalies and injustices are compensated. The question is to know on what page of this history he should prepare to play his part. He will not learn this at once. It is of little use for him to peep at the notes and permanences of the players who have come before him. What he wants is the immediate contact, the very breath of the hidden god. But the god is already thrilling into life, taking shape and countenance, giving a whispered hint of his intentions, speaking words of approval or condemnation; and the tragic struggle begins between the player, so infinitely small, and Chance, so enormous and omnipotent.
13
Now that the battle is joined, now that the player has done what he could to summon and welcome luck, there is nothing left for him to do but wait; for luck, when all is said, will remain the supreme power that pronounces the final verdict, the formidable and inevitable unknown factor in every combination. The best of systems cannot overcome an abnormal and pitiless run of bad luck which makes you stake incessantly on the losing colour. A run like this, without favourable intermittences, is extremely rare but always possible. It corresponds, for that matter, with the extraordinary strokes of good luck, which seem more frequent only because they attract more attention. From time to time we see a man, or rather let me say a woman—for it is nearly always female players who have these inspirations—walk up to the table and with a high hand and not the least hesitation gamble en plein or en cheval, on a transversale or carré, and win time after time, as though she saw beforehand where the ball would fall. These moments of intuition are always very brief; and, if the player insists or grows stubborn, she will soon lose whatever she has won. It is none the less true that, when we observe this very obvious and striking phenomenon, we wonder whether there is not something more in it than mere coincidence. When all is said, can luck be anything other than a passing and dazzling intuition of what will flash into actuality before everybody’s eyes a second later? Is not the compartment which does not yet contain the little ball, but which in an instant will snap it up and hold it, is not this compartment already, somewhere, a thing of the present and even of the past? But these are questions which would lead us too far afield in space and time.
14
Be this as it may, to return to the system of which we were speaking, even if I were at liberty to divulge its secret I should not do so. I am not a very austere moralist and I look upon gambling as one of those profoundly human evils which we shall never be able to uproot and which, for all our efforts, will always reappear in a new form. Still, the least that we can do is not to encourage it. The gambler, I mean the inveterate, almost professional gambler, is not interesting. To begin with, he is an idler and nearly always a part of the world’s flotsam, with no justification for his existence. If he be rich, he is making the most foolish, the most dismal use of his money that can be imagined. If he be poor, he is even less easily to be forgiven: he should know better than to sacrifice his days and too often the welfare and the peace of mind of those dependent on him to a will-o’-the-wisp. Underlying the gambler we find too often a sluggard, an incompetent, a boneless egoist, greedy of vulgar and unmerited pleasures, a dissatisfied and inefficient individual. Gambling is the stay-at-home, imaginary, squalid, mechanical, anæmic and unlovely adventure of those who have never been able to encounter or create the real, necessary and salutary adventures of life. It is the feverish and unhealthy activity of the wastrel. It is the purposeless and desperate effort of the debilitated, who no longer possess or never possessed the courage and patience to make the honest, persevering effort, the unspasmodic, unapplauded effort which every human life demands.
There is also a great deal of puerile vanity about the gambler. Taken for all in all, he is a child still seeking his place in the universe. He has not yet realized his position. He thinks himself peerless in the face of destiny. In his self-infatuation he expects the unknown or the unknowable to do for him what it does not do for any one whomsoever. And he expects this for no reason, simply because he is himself and because others have not that privilege. He must tempt fate incessantly, hurriedly, anxiously, in I know not what idle and pretentious hope of learning to know himself from without. Whatever fortune’s decision may be, he will find cause for preening himself. If he have no luck, he will feel flattered because he is specially persecuted by fortune; if he be lucky, he will think all the more highly of himself because of the exceptional gifts which she bestows upon him. For the rest, he does not need to believe that he deserves these gifts; on the contrary, the less right he has to them, the prouder he will be of them; and the unjust and manifestly undeserved chance which makes them his will form the best part of the vainglorious satisfaction which he will contrive to extract from them.