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Updated: June 23, 2025
They of Noirbourg went home sadly every night: the invader was carrying all before him. What must have been the feelings of the great Lenoir? What were those of Washington before Trenton, when it seemed all up with the cause of American Independence; what those of the virgin Elizabeth, when the Armada was signalled; what those of Miltiades, when the multitudinous Persian bore down on Marathon?
The moment, however, that graceless money was gone, equanimity was restored: Paul Feval and Eugene Sue began to be terrifically interesting again; and the dinners at Noirbourg, though by no means good culinary specimens, were perfectly sufficient for my easy and tranquil mind.
Kicklebury has a great acquaintance at Noirbourg, and as he walks into the great concert-room at night, introducing his mother and sisters there, he seemed to look about with a little anxiety, lest all of his acquaintance should recognize him. There are some in that most strange and motley company with whom he had rather not exchange salutations, under present circumstances.
Now, whether it was that the presence of his mamma interrupted his pleasures, or certain of her ways did not please him, or that he had lost all his money at roulette and could afford no more, certain it is, that after about a fortnight's stay at Noirbourg, he went off to shoot with Count Einhorn in Westphalia; he and Hicks parting the dearest of friends, and the baronet going off on a pony which the captain lent to him.
The only gentleman whom I saw at Noirbourg who seemed really affected was a certain Count de Mustacheff, a Russian of enormous wealth, who clenched his fists, beat his breast, cursed his stars, and absolutely cried with grief: not for losing money, but for neglecting to win and play upon a coup de vingt, a series in which the red was turned up twenty times running: which series, had he but played, it is clear that he might have broken M. Lenoir's bank, and shut up the gambling-house, and doubled his own fortune when he would have been no happier, and all the balls and music, all the newspaper-rooms and parks, all the feasting and pleasure of this delightful Rougetnoirbourg would have been at an end.
How the old lady coaxes, and she wheedles! She pours out the Talboys' pedigree upon him; and asks after his aunt, and his mother's family. Is he going to Noirbourg? How delightful! There is nothing like British spirits; and to see an English matron well set upon a young man of large fortune and high rank, is a great and curious sight.
Roughhead is a most wild and dissipated young man, one of Kicklebury's Christchurch friends, of whom her son has too many, alas! and she enters into many particulars respecting the conduct of Kicklebury the unhappy boy's smoking, his love of billiards, his fondness for the turf: she fears he has already injured his income, she fears he is even now playing at Noirbourg; she is going thither to wean him, if possible, from his companions and his gayeties what may not a mother effect?
"Lord and Lady Wyebridge and suite, Lady Zedland and her family." "Hallo! here's Cutler of the Onety-oneth, and MacMull of the Greens, en route to Noirbourg," says Hicks, confidentially. "Know MacMull? Devilish good fellow such a fellow to smoke." Lankin, too, reads and grins.
They called themselves in their pride the Contrebanque de Noirbourg: they had their croupiers and punters, even as Lenoir had his: they had their rouleaux of Napoleons, stamped with their Contrebanquish seal: and they began to play.
The Prince of Trente et Quarante has quite overcome the old serene sovereign of Noirbourg, whom one cannot help fancying a prince like a prince in a Christmas pantomime a burlesque prince with twopence-halfpenny for a revenue, jolly and irascible, a prime-minister-kicking prince, fed upon fabulous plum-puddings and enormous pasteboard joints, by cooks and valets with large heads which never alter their grin.
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