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"I will ask Madame Bertrand to let me lie down and go to sleep," she thought, "before I go to the Redoute, and then I shall be all right."
The second year of my Frankfort appointment I was tempted to this unhappy place. The unexpected sight of faces which I had known in England, though they called up the most painful associations, strengthened me, nevertheless, in my resolution to be virtuous. My unexpected fortune at the Redoute, the first night, made me forget all my resolves, and has led to all this misery.
She evidently did not believe in ghosts, for I could hear how she fell asleep immediately after getting into bed; nor do I believe in them, "mais je les redoute," as a French lady said, who from her books appears to have been strongminded.
She was turning towards the Redoute, when an idea suddenly occurred to her an idea most natural, arising, as it did, from that instinctive cry for more than human help, that awakes in every heart on great emergencies, and appealing, moreover, to that particular class of religious sentiment which in our little orphaned Madelon had most readily responded to convent teaching.
Who would have recognized the brilliant colonel, who penetrated by the side of Montbrun the heart of the Grande Redoute, in the planter of forty-five, busy with his cotton and his sugar-cane, who made a fortune in a short time by dint of energy and good sense?
These little diversions and jeux de societe can go on anywhere; in an alley in the park; in a picnic to this old schloss, or that pretty hunting-lodge; at a tea-table in a lodging-house or hotel; in a ball at the Redoute; in the play-rooms behind the backs of the gamblers, whose eyes are only cast upon rakes and rouleaux, and red and black; or on the broad walk in front of the conversation rooms, where thousands of people are drinking and chattering, lounging and smoking, whilst the Austrian brass band, in the little music pavilion, plays the most delightful mazurkas and waltzes.
In one of the most aristocratic countries in the word the sovereign prince and his tradesman subject may be found seated in the morning at the same board, and eating from the same dish, as in the evening they may be seen staking on the same colour at the gaming-table, and sharing in the same interest at the Redoute. The situation of Ems is delightful.
Crowds of foreigners arrived for the fetes, and of English, of course. Besides the Court balls, public balls were given at the Town Hall and the Redoute, and in the former place there was a room for trente-et-quarante and roulette established, for the week of the festivities only, and by one of the great German companies from Ems or Aix-la-Chapelle.
The dinner was long, and a great deal of wine was drunk: more than most of the parties present for a long time had been accustomed to. About eight o'clock the Chevalier proposed going to the Redoute, but the Baron objected. "Let us have an evening altogether: surely we have had enough of the Redoute. In my opinion one of the advantages of the fete is, that there is no New House to-night.
Half an hour later, Madelon, in the midst of the blaze of light in the big gambling salon of the Redoute, is thinking of nothing in the world but rouge-et-noir and the chances of the game before her.
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