Whilst fortune as a rule seems to delight in favouring novices at play, and is somewhat pitiless to those who have wooed her for years, there have been certain old gamblers who, by making a study of some particular game, have attained to such perfection in playing it as seldom to lose. With some of these play endures as a dominant passion after almost all the other faculties have become impaired.
Not very many years ago a well-known figure in a certain Parisian Club, existing mainly for the purposes of play, was an old gentleman who, paralysed below the waist, was most afternoons carried upstairs in an invalid chair, placed in a fauteuil, and propped up with cushions in order that he might hold a bank at his favourite écarté, a game at which he was an expert of the highest kind.
Up to within a day or two of his death he continued to indulge in a game which was practically his only link with the living world, his faculties, though usually somewhat clouded, recovering all their old vitality as far as concerned the purposes of the card-table.
A case of much the same sort was described by Brillat Savarin, who, in the country where he resided, knew an old guardsman who had served under Louis XV. and Louis XVI.
This aged individual, rather below than above the average of ordinary men in general intelligence, possessed an extraordinary aptitude for games—an expert at all the old ones, he would master any novelty in this line after having played it once or twice.
With the advent of old age he had become paralysed—two faculties alone remaining unimpaired—that of digestion and that of play. Every day for twenty years he had been in the habit of frequenting a house where he was made welcome. Here he would sit in a semi-comatose condition, hidden away in a corner, seemingly indifferent to anything that was done or said. When, however, the card-table was drawn out, he immediately revived, and having dragged himself to a seat, soon demonstrated that his powers as a gamester were as brilliant as in the long dead past when he was a dashing officer at Versailles.
One day there came down into this part of France a Parisian banker who was soon discovered to be a passionate votary of piquet, a game which he declared himself ready to play with any one for very large stakes. A council of war was held, and eventually it was decided that the old guardsman should champion country against town, a war fund being raised by general subscription, winnings or losings to be allocated according to the size of the different shares.
When the banker sat down to the card-table to find himself confronted by a grim, gaunt, twisted figure, he at first believed himself the victim of a joke, but when he saw this spectre take the cards, shuffle and deal with the air of a professor, he began to divine that no unworthy antagonist was pitted against him. This conclusion was before long considerably strengthened, for the unfortunate Parisian was outmatched in play to such an extent that he eventually retired the loser of a very substantial sum. Before setting out for his return journey to Paris, the banker in question, whilst thanking all he had met for their hospitality, declared that there was only one thing he had to deplore, which was having been so bold as to pit himself against a corpse at cards.
There is an awful story told of a gambler who refused to die, and who, when in extremis, had the card-table drawn up to his bedside with strong meats and drinks, and held the cards against Death himself; but the grim tyrant held all the trumps, and soon snatched his prey.
Utter absorption to extraneous influences brands gamblers as with a hot iron, and so great is the fascination which play exercises over certain natures, that there exist people who fully believe that there is only one thing less pleasant than winning—which is to lose. The originator of the maxim in question was Lieutenant-Colonel Aubrey, one of the boldest and most adventurous men that England has ever known, who lived on into the twentieth century.