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Updated: May 3, 2025
Waiters stood aloof, effacing themselves, prepared to pounce upon their smallest need and annihilate it. Dupontel breathed a number as he sat down, and the rotund and reverend wine-waiter, wearing a chain of office, tried to express in his face respectful esteem for a man who could give such an order. "You need a stimulant, an encouragement," said Dupontel, leaning across to the Prince.
I have my share of prudence me! and that is a risk I do not take. No!" He interrupted himself to drink from his glass, while Dupontel sat back and prepared, with a gesture of utter impatience, to be contemptuous and argumentative. "Carigny," said the Prince, setting his glass down, "Carigny, in the old days, believed that too. But he was not prudent.
"In what way do I begin it well?" Dupontel produced a pocket-book from the breast of his coat. "I have to settle with you over last evening," he said. "Two thousand, wasn't it? I call that beginning any day well." He dropped the notes upon the little table where the Prince's hat and cane lay. The Prince picked up the notes. "Thanks!" he said. He looked at the young man almost with curiosity.
Her youth and beauty and her father's pedigree dazzled Dupontel, upset his brain, and altogether turned him upside down, and combined they seemed to him to be a mirage of happiness and of pride of family.
Dupontel was no more than twenty-five, and the Prince was one of his admirations and his most expensive hobby. He rose from his seat, smiling, surveying, the other's effect of immaculate clothing, fine bearing, and striking looks, and marking the set of his countenance. "You look very correct today," he remarked pleasantly. The Prince nodded without humor.
"I have heard the story, of course; but I never heard he was dangerous." "It is not he that is dangerous," said the Prince. "What, then?" The Prince shook his head doubtfully. Such men as he seldom have a confidant, but he was used to speak to Dupontel with more freedom than to any other. "Things are dangerous," he answered. "There is bad luck about; I tell you, I feel it.
"It is one of my days for being correct," he answered. "I feel it in the air it is a day to be on my guard. I have these sensations sometimes not often, mercifully! and I have learned to pay attention to them." Dupontel smiled again. "To me it seems a cheerful day," he said. "And you begin it well, at any rate." "How, then?" The Prince, coaxing on his grey gloves, turned narrowed eyes upon him.
Their clasped hands fell apart. The Prince looked his incomprehension. The young man was making him a bow of sorts. "I am charmed," he answered. "But read your cards? I don't understand." Dupontel arrested an impulse to step forward, to interrupt, to interfere in some manner. He saw that Carigny smiled. "Yes," he answered. "Tell me which card is which, you know.
Ecarte, since you wish it, by all means." Dupontel, to whom he had explained himself, knew what that handshake had meant. In the move toward the card-table, he caught his eye. The Prince smiled at him. "You see how useless it is to strive," he seemed to say.
Dupontel had not meant to accompany the Prince to his club that day; his purpose had been to leave him at the door and go elsewhere. But it was possible that his meeting with Carigny might be something which it would be well to have seen; and, besides, his affairs were gaining a strange hue; glamour was in them.
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