"What, Hicks, how are you, old fellow? How is Platts? Who would have thought of you being here? When did you come?"
"I had the pleasure of travelling with Lady Kicklebury and her daughters in the London boat to Antwerp," says Captain Hicks, making the ladies a bow. Kicklebury introduces Hicks to his mother as his most particular friend—and he whispers Fanny that "he's as good a fellow as ever lived, Hicks is." Fanny says, "He seems very kind and good-natured: and—and Captain Hicks waltzes very well," says Miss Fanny with a blush, "and I hope I may have him for one of my partners."
What a Babel of tongues it is in this splendid hall with gleaming marble pillars: a ceaseless rushing whisper as if the band were playing its music by a waterfall! The British lawyers are all got together, and my friend Lankin, on his arrival, has been carried off by his brother serjeants, and becomes once more a lawyer. "Well, brother Lankin," says old Sir Thomas Minos, with his venerable kind face, "you have got your rule, I see." And they fall into talk about their law matters, as they always do, wherever they are—at a club, in a ball-room, at a dinner-table, at the top of Chimborazo. Some of the young barristers appear as bucks with uncommon splendor, and dance and hang about the ladies. But they have not the easy languid deuce-may-care air of the young bucks of the Hicks and Kicklebury school—they can't put on their clothes with that happy negligence; their neck-cloths sit quite differently on them, somehow: they become very hot when they dance, and yet do not spin round near so quickly as those London youths, who have acquired experience in corpore vili, and learned to dance easily by the practice of a thousand casinos.
Above the Babel tongues and the clang of the music, as you listen in the great saloon, you hear from a neighboring room a certain sharp ringing clatter, and a hard clear voice cries out, "Zero rouge," or "Trente-cinq noir. Impair et passe." And then there is a pause of a couple of minutes, and then the voice says, "Faites le jeu, Messieurs. Le jeu est fait, rien ne va plus"—and the sharp ringing clatter recommences. You know what that room is? That is Hades. That is where the spirited proprietor of the establishment takes his toll, and thither the people go who pay the money which supports the spirited proprietor of this fine palace and gardens. Let us enter Hades, and see what is going on there.
Hades is not an unpleasant place. Most of the people look rather cheerful. You don't see any frantic gamblers gnashing their teeth or dashing down their last stakes. The winners have the most anxious faces; or the poor shabby fellows who have got systems, and are pricking down the alternations of red and black on cards, and don't seem to be playing at all. On fete days the country people come in, men and women, to gamble; and THEY seem to be excited as they put down their hard-earned florins with trembling rough hands, and watch the turn of the wheel. But what you call the good company is very quiet and easy. A man loses his mass of gold, and gets up and walks off, without any particular mark of despair. The only gentleman whom I saw at Noirbourg who seemed really affected was a certain Count de Mustacheff, a Russian of enormous wealth, who clenched his fists, beat his breast, cursed his stars, and absolutely cried with grief: not for losing money, but for neglecting to win and play upon a coup de vingt, a series in which the red was turned up twenty times running: which series, had he but played, it is clear that he might have broken M. Lenoir's bank, and shut up the gambling-house, and doubled his own fortune—when he would have been no happier, and all the balls and music, all the newspaper-rooms and parks, all the feasting and pleasure of this delightful Rougetnoirbourg would have been at an end.
For though he is a wicked gambling prince, Lenoir, he is beloved in all these regions; his establishment gives life to the town, to the lodging-house and hotel-keepers, to the milliners and hackney-coachmen, to the letters of horse-flesh, to the huntsmen and gardes-de-chasse; to all these honest fiddlers and trumpeters who play so delectably. Were Lenoir's bank to break, the whole little city would shut up; and all the Noirbourgers wish him prosperity, and benefit by his good fortune.
Three years since the Noirbourgers underwent a mighty panic. There came, at a time when the chief Lenoir was at Paris, and the reins of government were in the hands of his younger brother, a company of adventurers from Belgium, with a capital of three hundred thousand francs, and an infallible system for playing rouge et noir, and they boldly challenged the bank of Lenoir, and sat down before his croupiers, and defied him. They called themselves in their pride the Contrebanque de Noirbourg: they had their croupiers and punters, even as Lenoir had his: they had their rouleaux of Napoleons, stamped with their Contrebanquish seal:—and they began to play.
As when two mighty giants step out of a host and engage, the armies stand still in expectation, and the puny privates and commonalty remain quiet to witness the combat of the tremendous champions of the war: so it is said that when the Contrebanque arrived, and ranged itself before the officers of Lenoir—rouleau to rouleau, bank-note to bank-note, war for war, controlment for controlment—all the minor punters and gamblers ceased their peddling play, and looked on in silence, round the verdant plain where the great combat was to be decided.
Not used to the vast operations of war, like his elder brother, Lenoir junior, the lieutenant, telegraphed to his absent chief the news of the mighty enemy who had come down upon him, asked for instructions, and in the meanwhile met the foe-man like a man. The Contrebanque of Noirbourg gallantly opened its campaign.
The Lenoir bank was defeated day after day, in numerous savage encounters. The tactics of the Contrebanquist generals were irresistible: their infernal system bore down everything before it, and they marched onwards terrible and victorious as the Macedonian phalanx. Tuesday, a loss of eighteen thousand florins; Wednesday, a loss of twelve thousand florins; Thursday, a loss of forty thousand florins: night after night, the young Lenoir had to chronicle these disasters in melancholy despatches to his chief. What was to be done? Night after night, the Noirbourgers retired home doubtful and disconsolate; the horrid Contrebanquists gathered up their spoils and retired to a victorious supper. How was it to end?