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It kept its prayer meeting room neatly and appropriately furnished, but it added a large social parlor, its walls adorned with pictures, a fine piano invitingly open, the best current periodicals, secular and religious, upon the tables, and games of checkers, chess, and dominoes distributed about the room. The young men came in crowds.
They were so much pleased with the game that they asked us to write down the name and where to get it, and one of them afterward told my nephew, also a cavalry officer, that they introduced it at their mess and played every night instead of cards or dominoes. It was really funny to see how annoyed they were when their scientific combinations failed.
The company were, it is true, not very select, but behaved with great propriety, so that there was nothing which could prevent my remaining among them. Some were playing at dominoes, while others were extracting most horrible sounds from a sort of mandolin with three strings; all, however, were smoking, chatting, and drinking tea, without sugar, from little saucers.
The whole city seemed to be absorbed in pleasure or gain, and crowds swarmed at all places of amusement with contented faces: there was no outward sign of despotism or unhappiness, since everybody found employment. Even the idlers who frequented the crowded cafés of the boulevards seemed to take unusual pleasure at their games of dominoes and at their tables of beer and wine.
"My king and I will lead, my lady-in-waiting will follow me, while you, my merry subjects, shall form, two by two, and march to grandest music. After the march, the dominoes shall be cast aside, and then " she paused, then laughing gaily she concluded, "then I shall know who my guests are." The trumpet's blare told all to be ready!
The King and Queen and their lords and ladies who had looked on at the living puppet show had all left the amphitheatre; they had put on their masks and their dominoes, and were now dancing on the lawns, whispering in the alleys and the avenues, or sitting in groups under the tall dark trees.
A "beard" in glasses and a stovepipe hat, who had been refused in his youth at the Ecole Polytechnique, was frightful in the rapidity and mathematical precision with which he added up in three minutes his barricade of dominoes. When this man "blocked the six," you were transported in imagination to the Rue Transnonain, or to the Cloitre St. Merry. It was terrible!
"And a wery good dish too," observed Mr Snipe, whose intellect, being strictly limited to dominoes, was not quite equal to the metaphorical. "By mutton and turnips, I means he may be rich; but he ain't genteel, Snipe. Look at our Sophiar's shoulders."
Just two men remained, their hands plunged deep into their pockets, bending their backs beneath the squall, their woolen caps pulled down over their ears; two big Normandy fishermen, bearded, their skin tanned through exposure, with the piercing black eyes of the sailor who looks over the horizon like a bird of prey. One of them was saying: "Come on, Jeremie, let's go play dominoes.
"You are quite right," she said gently, "only plain. Will you show me how to play dominoes?" "He can't," retorted Madame Joyselle, eagerly, "he has forgotten, and, besides, he cheats." Joyselle walked to the window, his shoulders shaking, and before the old man could retort, Théo came into the room carrying a lacquered tin tray with a jug of cider and some glasses on it. "Ah, you have come?
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