Mentally the Prince summed up all human passions in two pleasures which are the springs of all action—love and gambling. There were people who experienced equally the attraction of them both—Castro, for example. He himself had been interested only in love and could not understand the pleasures of gambling. Whenever he had gotten up from the gaming tables, each time with winnings, he had never felt any temptation to return. But looking at these ailing people, some of them very aged, at those incurables, all of them dragging themselves toward the roulette wheel as though toward a miraculous bath, he condoned them pityingly. What other pleasure was there left for them on earth? How could they fill the emptiness of their lives prolonged so tenaciously?
What he could not understand was the intense attitude, the hard faces, of the other gamblers who were healthy and strong. Young men moved among the women around the tables with hostile brusqueness, quarrelling with them harshly and treating them like enemies. Women suddenly lost their grace and freshness, becoming masculine all at once as they looked at the rows of cards of trente et quarante or at the mad whirl of the colored wheel. Their gestures were those of prize fighters. Their mouths were drawn. There was a look of fierceness in their eyes. As though warned instinctively of this transformation, no sooner did they tear themselves away from the tables than they took out their vanity case—the little mirror, the powder, and the rouge—to correct or efface the passing ravages of the play. Those of more dignified and normal appearance showed themselves at times to be the most reckless. In a place where all the women were doing the same as they, gambling had something official about it, something worthy of respect; it was possible for them to indulge in a vice without fear of gossip, without the risk of being criticized.
The Prince smiled as he remembered a story Toledo had told him a few days before: the despair of a woman of about forty who came from Nice with her two daughters every afternoon, and had finally lost fifty thousand francs.
"Oh! If I had only taken a lover," the mother had groaned with tears in her eyes. "It would have been better if I had chosen love."
Michael entered the other rooms that had no skylight. The clusters of electric bulbs lighting them with senseless splendor made him think of the burning sun and the azure sea just beyond those walls of gold and jasper.
Above the tables were oil lamps with two enormous shades each one sheltering four fixtures which hung by bronze chains several yards long, attached to the ceiling. Thus if the electric current was cut off, there was no danger of the patrons feeling tempted to appropriate the money on the tables.
Occasionally a little bell would sound, rung by one of the employees in black frock coat who directed the playing. A chip, a coin, or a bank note had fallen under the table. Suddenly with the promptness of a scene shifter waiting behind the stage, a lackey dressed in a blue and gold uniform appeared, carrying a dark lantern and a hook to rummage about among the players' feet until he found the lost object.
The discipline observable in these vast rooms was like that on a warship, where everything is in its place and every man at his post. In order to make sure that everything was going properly, various respectable gentlemen with decorations on their coat lapels, walked back and forth among the tables, with the air of officers on duty. Whenever voices were raised, these men appeared with rapid strides, to cut short the arguments in some tactful manner. When two gamblers claimed the same bet, they immediately settled the dispute by paying both. The money would finally come back to the house any way!
According to Atilio, the Casino was honeycombed in all directions with secret galleries, hidden openings and even trap doors, like the stage for a comedy of magic—all these for the sake of immediate service, and to avoid any annoyance to the patrons.
Sometimes the invalid fainted at the table or fell dead through too violent emotion. Immediately the wall would open and eject two attendants with a stretcher who would cause the troublesome body to disappear as though by enchantment. Those at the adjoining table would scarcely have a chance to be aware of it.