"Twenty-five years!" he had remarked with sadness one day to the Prince. "And I shall never be able to do anything else! It's too late now to get a fresh start. My life is ended, and they will bury me here, I'm sure; all that I inherited from my father, and all that several old aunts left me will remain here. There have been times, when I saw things as they are, and undertook to run away. But when I'm at a distance, I feel violently indignant. I remember that I've dropped more than a million here, I think that I ought not to resign myself to the loss, and in order to recover it, I come back at once to play, and lose again. I shall go on doing like that until I die. Besides, there's the castle...."
Michael was acquainted with the castle. It was on a peak of the Maritime Alps, in sight of Monte Carlo, near the village of La Turbie and the remains of the Trophy of Augustus which marks the ancient Roman road.
During his first years of life on the Riviera, the aristocratic Lewis had bought for a few thousand francs the ruins of a lordly stronghold that possessed the romantic tradition of having witnessed wars with the Counts of Provence, and scenes of family violence and murder. The son of the Historian, fonder of sport than of literature, considered it a matter of filial homage to reconstruct within sight of the Mediterranean a castle such as his father had described in telling the legends of his country. Part of his fortune had gone into this. The rest had been devoted to gambling. "With what I win," he used to say to himself, "I shall finish the castle." And since he imagined he would win fabulous sums, he started the reconstruction on a gigantic scale, directing it himself, according to the architectural fancies he had studied out from the drawings of Gustave Doré. The castle had remained half built, standing thus for many years. On the one side that was completed, the walls displayed huge gloomy-looking windows with stained glass. On the side opposite, the timber of the scaffolding was rotting; the unfinished walls stood there meeting at right angles, and the wind and rain entered the future drawing rooms, for lack of a fourth wall to shut them off. They were open to the view like a stage setting.
Whenever Lord Lewis' friends did not meet him in Monte Carlo it was because he was out of money, and was staying in his castle, sadly contemplating all that remained to be done. He lived in one of the wings that was most nearly completed, and passed the lonely hours in fighting with his peasant neighbors, the market people, and with every one in the district in fact, who considered it a duty to annoy him and exploit him in every possible way.
Whenever a remittance of a thousand or two thousand pounds sterling arrived from England, he proudly descended from his mountain to the Castle. He had a great aim in life, and he felt he must accomplish it. This time he was going to triumph! And when, after exciting fluctuations—his capital sometimes increasing, as though his hopes were about to be realized—he finally lost everything, Lewis would return to his refuge on the heights, and to his hermit's life, in hopes of new remittances, which were less frequent and more difficult to get each time.
The Prince had visited him once, in this new yet crumbling stronghold, to invite him on a long voyage on his yacht. But Lewis refused. He must continue his duel with the Casino to get back his money; he was under obligation to finish his undertaking.
The war had awakened him for a few weeks from the grip of his wild dream. His brother had died a few weeks before; but countless young nephews still remained. They had given up their comforts and pleasures in high society to offer their lives. Some of them, who were in the navy, had embarked on small vessels, torpedo-boats and submarines, seeking the greatest dangers; others entered the army as officers. A niece of his even, delicate in health, had been decorated on the firing line, for her sacrifices as a nurse.
"And I, miserable selfish man that I am," he said, in talking with the Colonel at the Casino, "go on being a mere Monte Carlo gambler. I ought to be out there, where the men are, but I can't.... I can't! My days are over; I'm a corpse that eats and sleeps just to go on gambling. Add to that the fact that some of my relatives, older than I am, are in the army!"
At the age of fifty-four, the consciousness of his moral decay, and his continual losses, had embittered his nature. Besides, the evenings that luck was against him he kept going out to the Casino bar, seeking inspiration in one whisky after another gulped down in haste. Heavy set, with square shoulders, a small head, deep blue eyes and a red mustache streaked with gray, he reminded Atilio somewhat of a wild boar, perhaps because of his aggressiveness and gruffness when he was in a bad humor. He gambled with his head sunk between his shoulders, his strong hands resting on the green baize, without looking at any one, and without allowing any one to talk to him, since it disturbed his calculations. The days when things were going wrong, and he was having arguments in regard to some doubtful play, with the employees or with those who were sitting near him at the tables, Lewis's outburst of rage broke the discreet calm of the gaming rooms. He insulted the croupiers, inviting them to step outside on the Square, while his biceps swelled like a prize fighter's. It was necessary to call one of the principal directors to pacify him with all the paternal considerations which a steady patron deserved.
This man, who in his youth had believed in neither God nor devil, lived a constant prey to superstitions which were Castro's delight. He detested strange faces, feeling certain that they exercised on him an evil influence. It was enough that he should see one across the green table, or behind his seat, to cause him to begin to growl in an undertone, until finally he would get up and go out to the bar, with the idea that a whisky taken in time would change his luck. His intimate friend, the only one who could live with him for several days in succession, was a French count, older than Lewis, and who was simply called by his title, as though he were nameless, or as though he were just naturally "The Count." The latter never gambled, but he was ever so wise, in spite of the fact that many people considered him insane! One day, thirty years ago, he had stepped out of his house in Paris, saying that he was going out to buy some tobacco, and he had not yet returned. His wife had died without seeing him, and his children, and countless grand-children, who had been born and had grown up during his absence, were anxious that he should never finish making his purchase.