The shopkeepers, more especially the jewellers, who generally were pawnbrokers too, and all dealers in articles of luxury, were also great losers by the change.
The joint-stock company, which had owned the tables, dissolved, after having divided a large amount of surplus. The shareholders had indeed no cause for complaint, yet one of the two directors took the dissolution so much to heart that he soon after drank himself to death.
A few days after the cessation of play hardly a gambler remained in the place.
One exception, however, there was, who for some years was pointed out as a rare specimen of an extinct race by the few officials of the rooms who had been retained as door-keepers and the like in the building from which all life had fled.
Still clad in the torn, somewhat shabby livery of more prosperous days when "Trinkgeld" was abundant, these men would describe to visitors how this Englishman, a man bearing an historic name, had created a sensation at the tables, where he had been notorious for his ill-luck. To all appearance entirely ruined, he had suddenly been left some twenty thousand pounds, which had soon followed the rest of his fortune into the coffers of the bank. Reduced to his last florin, fortune for a moment had seemed to relent, and he had left the rooms with about seven thousand pounds in his pocket. Having deposited this at his banker's, he had then declared his intention of never playing again—in less than a week the sum had been withdrawn and lost.
His friends, now believing him to be incorrigible, settled upon him a small allowance, which was paid quarterly, and with unfailing regularity found its way to the green cloth.
Seemingly stunned by the closing of the rooms, this Englishman lingered on for some years, mournfully marching about the spot which had engulfed his fortune, the loss of which, however, caused him less concern than being deprived of the means wherewith to gratify the passion that had dominated his life.
All the gambling companies had to pay large sums in return for the privileges which they enjoyed, but still they progressed most successfully till they were frightened from their propriety by Monsieur Blanc. This gentleman, after struggling against immense opposition on the part of the Frankfort merchants, who were naturally alarmed at the danger to which their commis and cash-boxes would be exposed by the proximity of a gambling-table, obtained a concession from the Elector of Hesse to establish a bank at Homburg-von-der-Höhe. Play was soon in full swing, with the additional attractions of being open all the year round, and of having only a trente-et-un après (known as the refait) for the players to contend against. Some time after, Wilhelmsbad was opened as a rival to Homburg, with no après at all; and the above mentioned, with the addition of Ems, Aix-la-Chapelle, and Cöthen, formed the principal establishments where "strangers were taken in and done for" throughout Germany.
Wilhelmsbad scarcely attracted the outside world at all, being frequented almost exclusively by Germans. Wildungen might have been called a child left out in the cold; the accommodation was indifferent, and the place itself cheerless and devoid of charm, besides which it was not so easy to get at. Modestly conscious of its slender claims to consideration, the authorities presiding over the tables allowed a minimum stake of 10 groschen (1 franc 25 cents), and only enforced a tax of a quarter of the refait at trente-et-quarante and a quarter of the zero at roulette, a state of affairs which should have been far from unfavourable to the players.
As a matter of fact, public gaming, whatever may be said against it, left those places where it formerly flourished in a high state of prosperity—the Kursaals and gardens of German health-resorts, such as Homburg and Baden-Baden, owed their inception entirely to gaming, whilst several other insignificant places were converted into agreeable pleasure-resorts by the influence of trente-et-quarante and roulette.