A gold louis! That meant many days of rest and comfort for the little beggar. Lucien was just about to awaken her and surprise her with her good fortune when, in a strange hallucination, he heard a voice in his ear, which whispered with the drawling inflection of the old Pole: "I haven't stirred from this place for two days, and for two whole days seventeen hasn't come out once. I'll bet you my fist that when the clock strikes twelve, seventeen will be the winning number."
Then this youth, who was twenty-three years of age, the descendant of a race of honest men,—this youth who bore a great military name, and had never been guilty of an unmanly act,—conceived a monstrous thought; an insane desire took possession of him. He looked anxiously up and down the street, and having assured himself that he had no witness, he knelt, and reaching out cautiously with trembling fingers, stole the treasure from the little shoe, then rose with a spring and ran breathlessly down the street. He rushed like a madman up the stairs of the gambling-house, flung open the door with his fist, and burst into the room at the first stroke of midnight. He threw the gold-piece on the table and cried,—
"Seventeen!"
Seventeen won. He then pushed the whole pile on the "red." The red won. He left the seventy-two louis on the same color. The red came out again. He doubled the stakes, twice, three times, and always with the same success. Before him was a huge pile of gold and bank-notes. He tried the "twelve," the "column,"—he worked every combination. His luck was something unheard of, something almost supernatural. One might have believed that the little ivory ball, in its frenzied dance around the table, had been bewitched, magnetized by this feverish gambler, and obeyed his will. With a few bold strokes he had won back the bundle of bank-notes which he had lost in the early part of the evening. Then he staked two and three hundred louis at a time, and as his fantastic luck never failed him, he soon won back the whole capital that had constituted his inherited fortune.
In his haste to begin the game he had not even thought of taking off his fur-lined coat, the great pockets of which were now swollen with the rolls of bank-notes, and heavy with the weight of the gold. Not knowing where to put the money that was steadily accumulating before him, he stuffed it away in the inside and outside pockets of his coat, his vest, his trousers, in his cigar-case, his handkerchief. Everything became a recipient. And still he played and still he won, his brain whirling the while like that of a drunkard or a madman. It was amazing to see him stand there throwing gold on the table by the handful, with that haughty gesture of absolute certainty and disdain. But withal there was a gnawing at his heart, something that felt like a red-hot iron there, and he could not rid himself of the vision of the child asleep in the snow,—the child whom he had robbed.
"In just a few minutes," said he, "I will go back to her. She must be there in the same place. Of course she must be there. It is no crime, after all. I will make it right to her,—it will be no crime. Quite the contrary. I will leave here in a few moments, when the clock strikes again, I swear it. Just as soon as the clock strikes again I will stop, I will go straight to where she is, I will take her up in my arms and will carry her home with me asleep. I have done her no harm; I have made a fortune for her. I will keep her with me and educate her; I will love her as I would a child of my own, and I will take care of her,—always, as long as she lives!"
But the clock struck one, a quarter past, half-past, and Lucien was still there. Finally, a few minutes before two the man opposite him rose brusquely and said in a loud voice,—
"The bank is broken, gentlemen; this will do for to-night."
Lucien started, and wedging his way brutally through the group of gamblers, who pressed around him in envious admiration, hurried out into the street and ran as fast as he could toward the stone bench. In a moment he saw by the light of the gas that the child was still there.