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No doubt it is better for us all, and better art, that in the novel of society the destiny should be decided by character. What an artistic and righteous consummation it is when we meet the shrewd and wicked old Baroness Bernstein at Continental gaming-tables, and feel that there was no other logical end for the worldly and fascinating Beatrix of Henry Esmond!
In one of these apartments silver trays were set out with sherbets, cakes, and fruit cooled in snow, while in another stood gaming-tables around which the greater number of the company were already gathering for tresette.
He conducted me to a house under the piazzas in Covert Garden, which we entered, and having delivered our swords to a grim fellow who demanded them at the foot of the staircase, ascended to the second story, where I saw multitudes of people standing round two gaming-tables, loaded, in a manner, with gold and silver.
The fifteen thousand rich visitors who were wont to flock into the city during the season had gone elsewhere to recruit their health on the sands and lose their money at the gaming-tables. They had been frightened to the coasts of France by the apparition of Carlism, and San Sebastian was plaintive. Her streets and her coffers were empty.
All the kings she had met had something the matter with them, crooked legs, weak eyes, bald, young, or old, and daft over gaming-tables and opera-dancers. And the one man among them all at least she had been informed that the king of Jugendheit was all of a man had politely declined. There was some chagrin in this for her, but no bitterness or rancor.
Yet I am not speaking of the hungry, restless folk who, by scores nay, even by hundreds could be seen crowded around the gaming-tables.
The gaming-tables have constant visitors; there, thousands are daily and nightly lost and won; parties even sit down to try their luck round the outside of the door as well as in the room:— “Vestibulum ante ipsum primisque in faucibus aulæ Luctus et ultrices, posuere sedilia curæ.”
The boudoir was empty, the ball was just beginning, the gaming-tables were open, offering their green cloths and their packs of cards still compressed in the frail case placed upon them by the customs office. The second quadrille was in progress.
Here I fancied myself in the Circus Maximus at Rome seeing the ancient games and the racings of the chariots and horsemen, and in this warmth of my imagination I pleased and diverted myself more and in a more noble manner than I could possibly do in the crowds of gentlemen at the weighing and starting-posts and at their coming in, or at their meetings at the coffee-houses and gaming-tables after the races were over, where there was little or nothing to be seen but what was the subject of just reproach to them and reproof from every wise man that looked upon them.
The people of his wretched principality are relieved of all taxes, even for gas and water which secures their gratitude and silence: the profits from the gaming-tables pay for all. I believe it pays the entire expenses of the municipality, so that the prince has simply to draw the remainder of his share in this inhuman plunder.
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