For a moment he thought the ground was falling away beneath his feet; he seemed to be floating in air, surrounded by mysterious forces that were weakening and finally breaking his will. He passed his hand over his forehead, as though trying to brush away, far away, his momentary weakness.
"The she-devil," he exclaimed, mentally, insulting Fortune, sure once more that he was going to enslave her.
And he went on playing.
At three o'clock in the afternoon he came out of the Hôtel de Paris. He had lunched alone, without paying any attention to the glances he had received from other tables, avoiding friendly greetings that might have started a conversation.
In his mouth was a fat cigar, and his legs, although perfectly steady, inwardly felt a certain voluptuous sensation. The food had been bad; he had scarcely touched the dishes; on the other hand he had drunk a bottle of famous Burgundy, and several glasses of cordials immediately after finishing two cups of coffee.
From the hotel steps he gave a glance of destructive hate at the square, the Casino and the Gardens. He thought with satisfaction of the possibility of a cruiser belonging to one of the nations which were carrying on war on the seas of Europe anchoring in front of that gingerbread house, and firing a few shells at it. What a wonderful sight! Then, in his imagination, he had a landing party with their machine guns disembark, to take prisoner all the people who were filling the square, men, women and even children. The world would lose nothing by it. What a city of corruption! Why the devil had his mother taken it into her head to buy the promontory of Villa Sirena, obliging him to live near this den of thieves? He even upbraided the dead Princess, with the stern uncompromising morality of every gambler who has just found himself tricked.
As he glanced over the gay, well-dressed crowd that he was condemning to slavery, he saw Alicia, alone and on foot, on the edge of the sidewalk around the "Camembert," looking at the Casino.
"Are you going in?" he said, approaching her.
The Duchess became indignant, as though he was proposing something humiliating, something that she had never done before. She enter the Casino?
"It's a rotten den, and the employees are rotters, and those who gamble—rotters too."