While Lewis played, the Count, seated on a divan, quietly read some book, without paying any attention to the curiosity of the public, which stared at his long white hair brushed back, his enormous wild-looking mustache, his round green eyes, gleaming with phosphorescence like those of a night hawk. Castro's curiosity was aroused by the Count's books. They were always new volumes of the sort that are never seen in any book store, and are published by obscure unknown firms; conscientious treatises on the nectars and ambrosias of modern life—opium, cocaine, morphine, and ether—formulas by which one can enter into direct communication with the mysterious powers—spirits, hobgoblins, and familiar demons—old books of magic brought to light by up-to-date sorcerers.
He never deigned to give his friend advice as to gambling; his thoughts were on higher things; but Lewis felt surer whenever he raised his eyes and saw him, by chance, reading in a corner. As long as he was there, he always won, or at least he did not lose much. His presence was enough to conjure the evil power of the infinite number of enemies which the Englishman felt were surrounding the table. Besides, he was aware of the object which the Count was fondling secretly with one hand, while he went on reading.
After he had had the misfortune to lose for several days in succession, Lewis would come to him, entreatingly:
"Count, my dear Count, if you would please lend me your Satan's rosary!"
The learned personage would look up, doubtful and hesitating. But since it was his best friend who asked for it, he would hand the rosary over, which meant that one of his hands would be left without anything to do. It was a rosary like any other, with large red beads and black ones to mark off the tens. The chief thing about it was the group of objects which hung in place of the missing cross: an ivory elephant picked up by the Count in India, an authentic coin of the Emperor Constantine found in the excavations at Anatolia, and another charm which even Lewis could scarcely look upon without a sense of revulsion.
Ill luck was vanquished. At times Lewis had lost while he was secretly telling the beads of the diabolical rosary under the table; but he always lost less than when he was deprived of the marvelous talisman. He only cared to remember how one afternoon, aided by the obscene sacrilegious thing so highly prized he had succeeded in winning eighty thousand francs.
If he stopped winning it was the Count's fault. He was as fickle as a coquette. He would suddenly disappear, repeating the same unexplainable flight that had amazed his family. He never left Lewis to go and buy tobacco; but if any of the books he bought told about some narcotic used in Asia to enable one to see the future, or about a gypsy woman in Granada who could kill people by merely wishing and saying a few words, then off he would go, accepting as gospel truth the saying of some anonymous writer who had never been out of Paris. He never lacked money for these mysterious trips: doubtless his family was interested in keeping him at a distance. He might be three months or five years in reappearing. At last the rumor would reach Lewis that his friend was living in Nice or Cannes, and he would then write him frequently, inviting him to come over to Monte Carlo. He even used to go after him and the Count would allow himself to be brought back with his mysterious books and his prodigious rosary, without ever saying a word about what discoveries he had made on his trips.
On seeing Lewis, after a year's absence, the Prince was obliged to conceal his surprise. Nothing save the clear, quiet, gentle eyes, recalled the vanished freshness of the athletic and elegant gentleman. He had grown thin in an alarming manner, with the emaciation of illness. His skull seemed to have shrunk, and across his baldness strayed the few scattered ashen locks that still remained.
A remark made by the Colonel came to his mind. Toledo had made a study of the decadence of gamblers. It was when they reached the last limits of depression and despair that they began to stoop, to shrivel up, and become wrinkled. Lewis' hat was getting too big for him; each day it sat farther down on his head until it rested on his ears. His shirt collar was also getting larger, as though it were making room for his sorrowing heart to take flight.
During the lunch, Lewis, Castro and Spadoni kept up the conversation. They talked about gambling and the Casino, but no one dared ask the Englishman if he had been winning. He had a superstitious fear of this question, as if it brought misfortune. On the other hand, he talked about other people's good luck, and the great stakes that had been won in a night. He kept in his mind all that he had been told, and all that he had imagined he had seen during twenty-five years of life at Monte Carlo. An American had gone away with a million; an Englishman had won ten thousand pounds sterling with five louis that he had borrowed. Thus he went on talking about the wonders that had happened in the Casino. And after that could there still be people to assert that all, absolutely all, of the gamblers, lose in the end?