“Parbleu! at Madame de Géran’s.”
Dufresne and Edouard parted; the former perfectly certain of the effect which his remarks had produced upon the feeble brain of Adeline’s husband, and the latter dreaming only of roulette and martingales, and already forming the most extravagant projects.
It was in this frame of mind that Edouard sought the place mentioned by the chevalier; he entered and walked through several rooms, until at last he reached one where a number of gamblers were assembled around a roulette table. He felt the blood mount to his cheeks, and he tried to conceal his embarrassment and to assume the air of an habitué of the game. Chevalier Desfleurets spied him; he rose, and ran toward him, and forgot to prick his card, he was in such haste to receive the three thousand francs. Edouard at once paid his debt; the chevalier was delighted with his debtor’s promptitude, and he invited him to sit down for a moment beside him. Edouard hesitated; he looked uneasily about him, fearing to meet someone whom he knew. He did in fact see several business agents whom he had met with Dufresne, and some other persons who had come to his party. But they all seemed wholly engrossed by the green cloth, and paid no attention to him. The chevalier led him, he allowed himself to be led, and in a moment he was seated at the roulette table.
Desfleurets took up his cards and began to prick again, after having inquired of a tall, lean man in a nut-colored coat, what numbers had come out. The tall man glanced angrily at him, coughed, spat, blew his nose, made a grimace, clenched his fists, and did not reply.
“He is a crank,” said the chevalier to Edouard, in an undertone; “he pricks his card three hours before risking his five-franc piece, and he almost always waits too long. He was watching the red zero, and I will wager that it came out before he bet on it. That man will never know the way to gamble; he is too much of a coward!”
Edouard looked on and listened with astonishment to what was taking place before him for the first time; for before his marriage he had never chosen to enter a gambling house, being prudent enough then to distrust his own weakness. It is only when one is certain not to yield to temptation, when one experiences for games of chance the horror which they should inspire in every sensible man, that one can safely enter a gambling hell. What a vast field for watching and studying the effects of that deplorable passion! The result of one’s reflections is melancholy, but it teaches a useful lesson, and a gambling house is the best place for a young man to correct himself of that fatal taste, if, instead of abandoning himself to the passion that leads him thither, he could examine coolly what is taking place about him.
What vertigo has seized upon those unhappy wretches, who crowd about the table and devour with their eyes the heaps of silver and gold, and the bank notes spread out before the croupiers? They do not see that all that money is there only to allure them, to lead them on; they say to themselves: “This one wins, that one goes away with his pockets full; why should not we be as fortunate as they?”—Ah! even if they should, would the money won in a gambling hell ever serve to enrich a family, to support a wife; to endow a daughter, to help the unfortunate? No, the gambler’s heart is hard and unfeeling, his mind is sordid and debased by the passion which dominates it. If they win to-day, they will play again to-morrow, until they can no longer procure aught to satisfy the insatiable greed which draws them to the fatal table. If they return home with their pockets filled with gold, do not imagine that they will be more generous with their families. Their wives are ill-clad, their children lack everything, creditors besiege their door; but they will give nothing, they will pay nobody, they will laugh at the threats of those whose wages they hold back, and will be indifferent to the voice of nature. Soon they will lose the money that a lucky chance caused them to win, and then woe to the poor creatures that surround them! it is upon them that they vent their rage, which they do not dare to display before strangers. It is in their own homes that they abandon themselves to anger, to brutality, even to the last excesses. They must have money; they seize upon everything that can still produce it; their children’s last garments are sold, the result of a day’s work disappears in a second upon a color or a number. Then they glare darkly about them, despair is depicted upon all their features; they gaze in frenzy at that gold which they cannot possess, and at the croupiers, who observe their despair with the coldest indifference. Then the guiltiest desires and the basest villainy torment their frantic imagination; they covet their neighbors’ money; they put out their hand toward it, and often, impelled by the cruel passion which destroys their wits, they commit the most shameful crimes. Such examples are only too common; gambling has three results, but they are inevitable: it leads either to suicide, to the poor-house or to the stool of repentance.
Edouard did not indulge in these reflections, unfortunately for him. He watched the game, and after he had mastered its principles, he placed a twenty-franc piece on the red; that color came out nine times in succession; and as Edouard had left his stake each time, he won in five minutes ten thousand two hundred and forty francs. Chevalier Desfleurets, leaping up and down on his chair in amazement at the sight of such extraordinary good-fortune, advised Murville in a whisper to stop there for the time, because, according to the probabilities and the prickings on his card, the black could not fail to come out next. The chevalier was very pleased to see the young man win, for he expected to meet him at Madame de Géran’s, and as he played very badly at écarté and paid very promptly, it was very satisfactory to know that he was in funds.
Edouard did not care about probabilities, but he was conscious of a great void in his stomach; for the occupation with which his new conquest had provided him all night made him feel the necessity of renewing his strength. So he rose and left the table, promising the chevalier to play with him that evening.
At that moment the ball stopped in a compartment, and, contrary to Desfleurets’s expectations, it rested on the red. Edouard was terribly vexed that he had left the game so soon, but he promised to make up for it at the first opportunity. The tall man in the nut-colored coat, who had overheard the advice which the chevalier had given Edouard, uttered a vulgar oath when he saw the red come out; whereat Murville was slightly astonished, in view of the fact that Dufresne had emphasized the extreme good breeding which prevailed in that establishment; but he stuffed his gold in his pockets none the less, and left the place, radiant because of his good luck.