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"It is not their fault then," said Martin. Most of the punters, who understood nothing of this language, drank, and Martin reasoned with the scholar, and Candide related some of his adventures to his hostess. After supper the Marchioness took Candide into her boudoir, and made him sit upon a sofa. "Ah, well!" said she to him, "you love desperately Miss Cunegonde of Thunder-ten-Tronckh?"
On Friday I dine at Keene's, and in the evening George and Mie Mie come, and George may renew his addresses to the young lady. Lady Lucan desires that we should choose King and Queen at her house. I have myself no objection to anything but the dinner abroad, Tuesday night. No letter come. The punters are, Charles, par interet, Fish Craufurd, par complaisance, and the D. of R., par betise.
Madame fainted away, the punters hurried out, and I followed their example, as soon as I had secured one-half of the gold which was on the table. I was glad enough it was not worse. As I left, Croce told me that we would meet again in Venice, for he had been ordered to quit Padua within twenty-four hours.
Hermann walked up to the table; the punters immediately made room for him. Chekalinsky greeted him with a gracious bow. Hermann waited for the next deal, took a card and placed upon it his forty-seven thousand roubles, together with his winnings of the previous evening. Chekalinsky began to deal. A knave turned up on the right, a seven on the left. Hermann showed his seven.
I thought his advice very considerate, particularly when I saw that all the punters lost, and that the Greek, very calm in the midst of the insulting treatment of those he had duped, was pocketing his money, after handing a share to the officer who had taken an interest in the bank. The name of the banker was Don Pepe il Cadetto, and by his accent I knew he was a Neapolitan.
He used to hold the cards in a way which frightened the punters; my manners were very different, and I was very lucky. Besides I was easy and smiling when my bank was losing, and I won without shewing any avidity, and that is a manner which always pleases the punters.
And when he ran with the ball I had the good pleasure of cutting his runs short. "Another man whom I consider one of the greatest punters of the past is Bull of Yale. I have stopped a good many punts and drop kicks in my play, but I do not remember stopping a single kick of his, and it was not because I did not try.
The lady insisted upon being called the Marchioness of Parolignac. Her daughter, aged fifteen, was among the punters, and notified with a covert glance the cheatings of the poor people who tried to repair the cruelties of fate. The Perigordian Abbé, Candide and Martin entered; no one rose, no one saluted them, no one looked at them; all were profoundly occupied with their cards.
A hundred years ago, no doubt there are no such people left in the world now, there used to be grown men in London who loved to consort with fashionable youths entering life; to tickle their young fancies with merry stories; to act as Covent Garden Mentors and masters of ceremonies at the Round-house; to accompany lads to the gaming-table, and perhaps have an understanding with the punters; to drink lemonade to Master Hopeful's Burgundy, and to stagger into the streets with perfectly cool heads when my young lord reeled out to beat the watch.
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.
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