She shrugged her shoulders, and pursed her lips disdainfully.
"Who could possibly know? I've been coming here for twelve years or more. Even the people in the Casino wouldn't be able to calculate what I've given them. In those days, I never used to keep any track of it myself. When I needed money I telegraphed to Paris. Besides, I had your mother; and I had my own, who usually gave in to my requests, in the end. I wouldn't like to know how much I've lost: it would make me furious. It must be millions."
The smile of commiseration with which Michael listened to her, seemed to make her bolder.
"But at that time I didn't know how to play! Now I must win, and I play in a different way. What I need is capital. If I only had a working capital!"
This last expression changed his smile into frank laughter. "A working capital!" The Duchess would go on talking seriously about her "work." She lamented the slenderness of her means. Some thirty thousand francs was all the capital she had at her disposal. At times it dwindled in alarming fashion: the thirty thousand often shrunk to a single digit. Then the ciphers would reappear, and the product of her "work" expand, gradually rising above the thirty thousand; but this amount seemed to be the fatal number for Alicia, for soon after reaching it her winnings would always fall to their usual level.
"Last night I was lucky; I succeeded in winning fourteen thousand francs. But last week was bad. Sum total, I'm still at thirty thousand: impossible to get any farther. And I don't run any chances, I'm afraid, and don't take advantage of the good runs of luck I do have. I ought to go on doubling, and doubling. I'm afraid of losing it all on a single stake. If I only had a working capital! If I were to go into the Casino some afternoon with a hundred and fifty or two hundred thousand francs! That's the way to master luck. I ought to play big stakes. Imagine me, betting a hundred, and even as low as twenty franc chips, like a retired money lender! That's the reason fortune doesn't notice me, and passes by on the other side."
The Prince shook his head. He refused to help her with her follies. Wasn't it better to keep those thousands of francs, instead of losing them in no time, as would happen when she was least expecting it?
"You're not a gambler, I know," she said. "You have never felt attracted to that sort of pleasure. That's why you don't realize the mysterious power of the game, and give advice about something you don't understand. If I were to give up playing, I would feel my poverty at once; then I would be really poor. While you play, you always have money in your hands; you win, and lose, but you never lack the necessities of life. And if you lose everything you can still get what you need to start in again. I don't know how it is, but a gambler always has plenty of money. A single coin puts him on his feet again in five minutes. It's the poor man who doesn't play who goes around with empty pockets, without hope or means of improving his situation."
Michael continued his mimicry of protest. That was all an old story to him; it was the way Spadoni, and even Castro, talked, but with a certain added fanaticism, characteristic of women, who, mystics in money matters, are always inclined to believe in presentiments and mysterious influences.
"Don't count on my helping you to gamble. Besides, I'm poor. At the present moment the Colonel must have less cash in the strong box than you. I'm almost tempted to ask you to loan me your thirty thousand francs."