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The reception-rooms were huge and sparingly furnished with those thin-legged chairs and ancient card-tables which recall the days of Letitia Ramolino and that easy-going Charles Buonaparte, who brought into the world the greatest captain that armies have ever seen. The bedrooms were small: all alike smelt of mouldering age.
Then designating every person at the different card-tables, she said, "That lady is the wife of M. , and there is M. le Baron de L her lover, the gentleman who looks over her cards and that other lady with the joli pompon, she is intimate with M. de la Tour, the husband of the lady who passed with M. le Duc."
And the mahogany and bird's-eye maple cabin, which once held rosewood card-tables and brilliant coffee-urns, and in which many a bottle of champagne, and many a bright eye sparkled, now accommodates a bluff Quaker captain from Martha's Vineyard; who, perhaps, while lying with his ship in the Bay of Islands, in New Zealand, entertains a party of naked chiefs and savages at dinner, in place of the packet-captain doing the honors to the literati, theatrical stars, foreign princes, and gentlemen of leisure and fortune, who generally talked gossip, politics, and nonsense across the table, in transatlantic trips.
As usual, there were cards, but for those only disposed to play; for, as this lady happened not to be under the necessity of recurring to the bouillotte as a financial resource, she gave herself little or no concern about the card-tables.
While he stared again at the letter, there rose before the Prince's eyes a vision of the evening upon which they had parted in a great; over-ornate room with card-tables in it, and a hanging chandelier of glass lusters that shivered and made a tinkling bell-music whenever the door opened. It had been a short game.
At half-past eight in the evening the two card-tables were set out. Madame des Grassins succeeded in putting her son beside Eugenie.
"I shall have nothing to do with the card-tables, and I hope not with the false hair nor yet much, I suppose, with the horse-jockeys." "There will still remain the worst of the four curses." "Mr. Bertram, how can you be so evil-minded? I have had many happy days at Littlebath." And then she paused, for she remembered that her happy days there had all been passed with Caroline Waddington.
He rose like a bull, stung to fury by a shower of darts, and prepared to obey Louise by declaiming Saint John in Patmos; but by this time the card-tables had claimed their complement of players, who returned to the accustomed groove to find amusement there which poetry had not afforded them.
Dick coming here, am I? Only don't expect me to burst into song about it. Shut the door behind you when you go out." But he didn't go at once. He stood watching me polish glasses and get the card-tables ready, and I knew he still had something on his mind. "Minnie," he said at last, "you're a shrewd young woman maybe more head than heart, but that's well enough.
As he thought of this, he even began to wish that it was done; he pictured to himself the easy pleasures, the card-tables, the billiard-rooms, and cafés of some Calais or Boulogne; pleasures which he had never known, but which had been so glowingly described to him; and he got almost cheerful again as he felt that, in any way, there might be bright days yet in store for him.
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