A loud buzz of conversation met the new comers, the game having been interrupted. Baluzzi seemed happy to have captured an Italian woman, and, with some pride, introduced Beate to those present as his countrywoman.
"Beate Romani--whence did this golden orange drop?" said an elderly lady, with a complexion yellow as a citron, to her young neighbour, in a low dress. The latter put her eyeglass more firmly upon her pug nose, and replied--
"Little and impudent--a soubrette! The captain is talking to her already; she seems to be pert."
The Polish Captain of Lancers, a Herr von Mierowski, did, indeed, find pleasure in the wily Italian, whose smile was so charmingly reserved. At the same time she let her eyes pass over the assembly, and especially examined the ladies; of these there were four: the mother, with the yellow tint in her face, and daughter, with the pug nose, also bore Polish names, consisting of a whole plica polonica of letters. Then there was another beauty in pink silk. That rose was a Berlin lady, of remarkable loquacity. Her face did not correspond with her toilet's language of flowers; she was pale as wax, and the pink ribbons flowed down from flaxen hair. The fourth lady was an unusually slender sylph, and Beate guessed correctly and quickly that she must be a late performer in some ballet, who, after having gradually retreated from the front row into the very last, had retired with honours from the field of renown. She was a French-woman, who pretended to have taken part in the Grand Opera, but who certainly had earned her questionable laurels in booths, or on similar stages.
The female company answered to that which is termed refuse at an annual fair--gay glazed ware, full of bubbles and cracks. Beate soon recognised this, but without being particularly contented with that result of her observations. She knew only too well that none of these Circes could have won Baluzzi's affections.
Several patrician sons were to be found amongst the gentlemen, who rather prided themselves upon trying their luck at the gaming table, and having discovered a miniature Homburg and Baden-Baden in the city of pure reason, at which were not wanting the Graces, who rustled their silks through the state rooms and along the terraces. A Russian prince, possessor of many serfs, was very impatient at the pause in the game, and walked angrily up and down, caring as little about the seductive beauties as if they had been painted in faded colours upon the walls.
The play began afresh; the roulette ball commenced its fatal course; people betted upon rouge and noir upon pair and impair, here and there also considerable sums were placed upon single numbers, which Baluzzi swept off with great satisfaction. The little gaming table was arranged exactly after the pattern of the larger Rhenish banks, and here, despite the small dimensions, sums could be lost which were not at all proportionate to those dimensions. The young merchant sons rejoiced over the losses, as much as over their gains, because they could thus show that it mattered not at all to them how they sacrificed vast sums, the loss of which would have reduced others to a state of nervous agitation.
Most eager was the Pole; he belonged to those persons who have converted hazard into a system, and who lose themselves in deep calculations as to the chances of the game; he sat with a little writing tablet in his hand, and carefully noted the occurrences at the green board, laughed at by the free thinkers of the gaming table, who believe in chance only, just as others perceive but a game of hazard in the great comedy of the world, and ridicule the thinkers who strive to reduce it into a system. The mother and her flaxen-haired daughter also played devotedly, although they merely pledged small sums; at each gain or loss, a red streak suffused the yellow-bronzed complexion of the mother, and the waxen features of the daughter received a sudden crimson glow, which vanished again just as quickly.
Despite all absorption in the hieroglyphics of chance, Mierowski had leisure sufficient to observe Beate's mode of playing, which in its thoughtless recklessness pierced his heart. Owing to the lively interest which he felt in the dainty Italian, he could no longer look calmly on; he rose from the table, and whispered the necessary hints to her, not omitting to squeeze her hand in token of his friendship.
Beate followed these hints, and lost bravely, an event which seemed to confuse all rules of the gambling method. He was all the more eagerly bent upon proving the truth of his calculations by means of his own success.