The night wore on, and once more the players were left alone. By this time d'Entragues was showing evident signs of complete exhaustion, which was increased by an altercation about some trifling point raised by Casanova with the express purpose of further weakening his opponent's resistance.
At nine o'clock next morning Madame Saxe arrived to find her lover losing, and so dazed that he could hardly shuffle the cards, count, or properly discard. Once more she appealed to Casanova, pointing out to him that he could now rise a winner. In a tone of great gallantry the latter replied that he would agree to abandon the struggle if the forfeit were declared void, a condition to which d'Entragues declined to assent. The latter, though very weak, showed considerable annoyance at the manner in which Casanova had spoken to Madame Saxe, and declared that for his part he should not leave the table till either he or his opponent lay dead upon the floor.
In due course of time soup was again brought to the players, but d'Entragues, who was now in the last stage of weakness, fell down in a dead faint almost immediately after the cup had been raised to his lips, and in this condition he was carried away to bed. On the other hand, Casanova, after having given half a dozen louis to the croupier (who had been awake for forty-two consecutive hours), leisurely put the gold he had won in his pockets, and strolled out to a chemist's where he purchased a mild emetic. He then went to bed and slept lightly for a few hours, getting up about three o'clock in the afternoon with an excellent appetite. His opponent did not appear till the next day, when, much to his credit, he told Casanova that he bore him no ill-will, and was on the contrary grateful to him for a lesson which he should remember all the days of his life.
Casanova was not always as successful as this in his gambling enterprises, which indeed occasionally involved him in unpleasant situations; but like most adventurers of his type and age he was seldom depressed by losses. He would appear to have generally dominated other gamesters whom he met—a state of affairs which was probably not unconnected with the Venetian's well-known truculence. Besides, he was, as a rule, not over-burdened with money, a circumstance which perhaps made him the more ready to engage in a contest. People who are over-prosperous are not given to exhibiting any particular spirit in such affairs. A gentleman, who had been fortunate at cards, was asked to be a second in a duel, at a period when the seconds engaged as heartily as the principals. "I am not," replied he, "the man for your purpose at this time; but go and apply to a friend of mine from whom I won a thousand guineas last night, and I warrant you he will fight like any devil!"
Though ready to resent any slight, and tenacious of keeping up a reputation for being "cock of the walk" in the circles in which he moved, Casanova was possessed of great self-control, and always made a point of being urbane, even whilst sustaining a severe reverse—a pleasing characteristic which, he declared, obtained him access to much pleasant society. It was his constant practice to hold a bank at the various resorts of the pleasure-loving world which he visited during his adventurous career. At Aix in Savoy (which is still a place in high favour with the votaries of chance owing to its two Casinos), Casanova was once particularly successful. He himself, with all a gambler's superstition, attributed his good fortune on this occasion to the appearance of three Englishmen—one of them Fox (then on the threshold of his career), who borrowed fifty louis of the great adventurer, whom he had previously met at Geneva.
From his earliest years Charles James Fox had been accustomed to gambling, having been elected a member of Brooks's when but sixteen years old. At that time the Club in question, now so decorous and staid, was the head-quarters of the fashionable London gamester, and the high-spirited youth fully availed himself of the excellent opportunities for dissipating a fortune which were here at easy command. On one occasion Fox sat playing at hazard for twenty-two consecutive hours, with the result that he rose the loser of eleven thousand pounds. At twenty-five he was a ruined man, his father having paid for him one hundred and forty thousand pounds out of his own property.
The Spendthrift