Each has now four tricks. It is the Baron’s lead. If his card be best he has more tricks than the Ombre, and will win Codille. If his card be a club or a diamond—spades are played out—Belinda’s King of Hearts will be unable to follow suit. He will be taken. Thus is she “between the jaws of ruin and codille.” But should his last card be a heart—she has the best heart—
“An Ace of Hearts steps forth: the King unseen
Lurked in her hand, and mourned his captive Queen.
He springs to vengeance with an eager pace,
And falls like thunder on the prostrate Ace.
The nymph exulting, fills with shouts the sky,
The walls, the woods, the long canals reply.”
In addition to the stakes she won, Belinda was entitled also to the value of four counters from each of her antagonists for her sequence of four Matadores, Spadille, Manille, Basto, and the King of Spades. Furthermore, if she had been playing Sans-prendre, each of her opponents would have three counters to pay her.
GLOSSARY
[114] And, in old English could be placed like “also” in different parts of a sentence. Thus, in Nymphidia,
“She hies her then to Lethe spring,
A bottle and thereof doth bring.”
[129] Atalantis, “As long as Atalantis shall be read.” Atalantis was a book of Court scandal by Mrs. De la Rivière Manley, in four volumes, entitled “Secret Memoirs and Manners of several Persons of Quality of both Sexes from the New Atalantis, an Island in the Mediterranean.” Mrs. Manley died in 1724.
[94h] Bauzon, badger. French, bausin.
[147a] Billies, fellows, used rather contemptuously.
[147f] Blellum, idle talker.