"How is that? Did the pretty Gitanitza escape you?"
"Au contraire, she fell asleep. A checkmate such as never happened to me before!"
Zeneida gave a merry laugh. No one could have divined under its mask the agitation she was feeling. She knew that a sleeping-draught had been given to Diabolka.
"Come along! let us be partners for gain or loss."
Chevalier Galban, accepting, took the seat allotted to him; Zeneida seated herself on the arm of his chair.
So it is a roulette-table pure and simple, and the party assembled gamblers. There is no "green book." A thickness of half an inch lay between him and it—his arm rested on it.
Merely contravention of a police regulation—a thing winked at by the authorities. Suppressed inclinations will find a vent—far better it should be on moral than political domains. Nor is it any matter for wonder that Nicholas Turgenieff should be the roulette banker. A man may be a bel esprit, a great author, philosopher, philanthropist, and yet have a passion for play. Even Napoleon was a gambler.
As the game was in full swing, Pushkin suddenly entered to them from a side room with flushed cheeks, crying, in a tone of triumph:
"The song is ready."
The gamblers looked askance at him.