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His long experience secured for him the confidence of his companions, and his open house, his famous cook, and his agreeable and fascinating manners gained for him the respect of the public. He came to St. Petersburg. The young men of the capital flocked to his rooms, forgetting balls for cards, and preferring the emotions of faro to the seductions of flirting.
"I am getting afraid of the cards, and when you are afraid of them, they master you." "Tut, tut!" said John kindly. "Do not blame yourself, good mother, if they show not all the gilded coaches and six, and the lovely bride and gay bridegroom you would fain have promised us." "The combinations turn to evil all evil. Pah! it is the old story. I was afraid of the cards, and they have mastered me."
"We can dig better on this Thames-side burgundy," said I. "No," said he; "I am host today. Champagne! Great God! We've a heavy enough task before us! Let us take a rest and gather strength while we may. Look at these blistered hands!" And pursuant to this idea of a holiday, he insisted upon playing cards after we had eaten.
She was evidently absorbed in the fortunes of the game, and she followed the slow falling of the fateful cards with rather feverish intentness. Her small gloved hands rested on the table, one of them loosely holding a tiny ivory rake; and on a bank-note spread open on the green cloth before her were two neat piles of gold, the one composed of twenty-franc, the other of ten-franc pieces.
So Nance dutifully slipped her trump cards back in the deck and forgot to declare while she idly watched the flash of diamonds on the wrinkled yellow hands, and longed for the clock to strike the next hour. At lunch she sat in the kitchen opposite Susan and listened to a recital of that melancholy person's woes.
Ulrich joined in her gayety, and taking the lute from his neck, offered it to the cavalier, with a defiant gesture, exclaiming: "It's at your disposal, Mask; we have changed parts. But please hold it firmer than you held your lady." High play went on in the gaming hall; Claudia was lucky with the artist's gold. At midnight the banker laid down the cards.
They are strangers to the intensity of religious passion, and to the swift instinct by which the heart of a child surrenders to absolute sincerity. This was what the North children felt in their father a devotion that was grave, stern, almost fierce in its single-hearted attachment to them. He was theirs altogether. He would not let them dance or play cards.
On one of the cards was inscribed: Captain Hector Servadac, Staff Officer, Mostaganem. On the other was the title: Count Wassili Timascheff, On board the Schooner "Dobryna."
Their orders were to let nobody pass excepting the sick provided with hospital cards and the few persons to whom special authorisations had been granted. They limited themselves, therefore, to raising the cords and then letting them fall behind the chosen ones, without heeding the supplications of the others.
Jansoulet, his newspaper in his hand, traversed this tumult without giving it a thought, carried by force of habit towards the club where he went every day for his game of cards from six to seven. A public man, he was that still; but excited, speaking aloud, muttering oaths and threats in a voice that had suddenly grown tender again at the memory of the dear old woman.
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