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We did not see any good monte suckers, so I opened up a game of rouge-et-noir and did a fair business until 11 o'clock; then I closed up and went to the bar, where I met a gentleman I had often seen on the packets. He knew me and my business, for he had seen me play monte several times. He invited me to join him in a drink, and then laughingly said: "Devol, how is the old business, anyway?"
"Yes don't you know? at rouge-et-noir," says Madelon in explanation, "one has little cards to prick, and then one remembers how many times each colour has won; otherwise one would not know at all what to do." "I see," said Graham; "and so your Russian Princess played at rouge-et-noir did she win much?"
I saw in the notes of the mothers their anxiety for the establishment of their daughters, and their respect for my acres; and in the cordiality of the sons who had horses to sell and rouge-et-noir debts to pay, I detected all that veneration for my money which implied such contempt for its possessor.
"Don't be a fool, Jasper. It is difficult, I know, to perish with dignity on sixteen and eightpence halfpenny: the odd coppers spoil the effect. Still we might bestow them on a less squeamish beggar and redeem our pride." "Tom," I said, suddenly, "you lost a lot of money once over rouge-et-noir." "Don't remind me of that, Jasper." "No, no; but where did you lose it?"
In the old gaining now suppressed, young men were the majority; in the days of your chivalrous forefathers it was the young nobles, not the old, who would stake their very mantles and swords on a cast of the die. And, naturally enough, mon cher; for is not youth the season of hope, and is not hope the goddess of gaming, whether at rouge-et-noir or the Bourse?"
Old acquaintance who met him said that M. Linders was a broken man, and that his best days were over: men who had been accustomed to bet on his success, shrugged their shoulders, and sought for some steadier and luckier player to back; he himself, impatient of ill-luck, and of continual defeat in the scenes of his former triumphs, grew restless and irritable, wandered from place to place in search of better fortune and better health, and at length, at the end of a fortnight's stay at Wiesbaden, after winning a large sum at rouge-et-noir, and losing half of it the next day, announced abruptly that he was tired of Germany, and should set off at once for Paris.
The night before he had lost rather heavily, and he wanted to recover his losses. Rouge-et-noir had pinched him; he would be revenged on the roulette. All day long combinations and numbers danced before his eyes. He had devised several plans by which to raise money, but these had fallen through. Suddenly he smiled, and beckoned to Stuler.
The Grand Duke missed his good stories, the rouge-et-noir table his constant presence, and Monsieur le Restaurateur gave up, in consequence, an embryo idea of a fete and fireworks for his own benefit, which agreeable plan he had trusted that, with his Excellency's generous co-operation as patron, he should have had no difficulty in carrying into execution.
The new generation, still educating, and, faithful to the original impulse, putting forth its fresh and aspiring tendrils, gets one boy into the church, another at the bar, and keeps a third at the great Rouge-et-Noir table of commerce. Some one of their stakes has a run of luck.
"Then go to Frascate's at ten; pass through the first room, enter the second, where they play 'rouge-et-noir, and when a new taille begins put your five francs on rouge, and leave it there." This promise of an adventure revived Ole Bull's drooping spirits, and he was faithful in carrying out his unknown friend's instructions.
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