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If I was not altogether ravished with the performance, Crook was. You could see that by the tender look of his eyes. After the music, cards were introduced, and they commenced playing vingt-et-un, Crook being the special favourite with everybody, especially with the ladies. I believe much was due to the expression of his eyes.
To this dance, or rather to these postures of a bayadère, succeeded the excitement of vingt-et-un, followed by well-earned repose. Next day there were new entertainments and new exercises; beginning with wrestling-matches for grown men and for youths, and proceeding with quail-fights, and feats performed by a camel and an elephant.
They then began to play at Vingt-et-un with the cards above described, which were certainly "free from dust and straw," as we say, but by no means free from grease and knavery; and after a few deals, Cortado could turn up an ace as well as Rincon his master.
"Un, deux, trois, quatre, cinq," Sara Lee would begin, and go on, rocking gently in her berth as the steamer rolled, "Vingt, vingt-et-un, vingt-deux, trente, trente-et-un " Her voice would die away. The book on the floor and Harvey's picture on the tiny table, Sara Lee would sleep. And as the ship trembled the light over her head would shine on Harvey's ring, and it glistened like a tear.
"You may say anything you like to me." They kissed each other good-by. Madame Ratignolle had not far to go, and Edna stood on the porch a while watching her walk down the street. Then in the afternoon Mrs. Merriman and Mrs. Highcamp had made their "party call." Edna felt that they might have dispensed with the formality. They had also come to invite her to play vingt-et-un one evening at Mrs.
The play was getting too high for me, and I'd lost enough to you for one night. "'To me', says I, 'how's that, my dear feller? How's that, my dear feller, says I, and he tells me, that he had borrowed thirty louis of me at vingt-et-un, that he gave me an I.O.U. for it the night before, which I put into my pocket-book before he left the room.
Cards afforded us a source of recreation, and even this frivolous amusement served to develop the character of Bonaparte. In general he was not fond of cards; but if he did play, vingt-et-un was his favourite game, because it is more rapid than many others, and because, in short, it afforded him an opportunity of cheating.
Sometimes, when Josephine formed a party of ladies for vingt-et-un, he would withdraw to a corner and indulge in the game of goose; and bystanders noted with amusement that his love of success led him to play tricks and cheat in order not to "fall into the pit."
"I did not fail to include this pack of cards among them," here the speaker exhibited that oviform specimen already mentioned "and with these I have gained my bread among the inns and taverns between Madrid and this place, by playing at Vingt-et-un.
We have but to make a trial where we are; let us spread the net, and it will go hard with us if some bird out of all the Muleteers standing about do not fall into it. I mean to say, that if we two begin now to play at Vingt-et-un as though we were in earnest, some one will probably desire to make a third, and, in that case, he shall be the man to leave his money behind him."
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