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He won at first, and gained as much as six thousand francs; but he let himself be dazzled by the idea of getting out of his difficulties at one stroke. He left the trente-et-quarante, hearing that the black had come up sixteen times at the roulette table, and was about to put five thousand francs on the red, when the black came up for the seventeenth time.
Success meant debts paid, a balance in the bank, houses, horses, even yachts and estates failure meant obscurity and suffering. The turn of the roulette wheel or the roll of a cube of ivory they well knew brought the same results, but these turnings they also knew were attended with a certain loss of prestige.
The attendant who took his coat and hat, the waiter who took his order for food, and the croupier who took his money, were all gladdened by his coming; for his gratuities were as large when he lost as when he won Even the reserved proprietor, accustomed as he was to a wealthy and careless clientele, treated Percival with marked consideration after a night when the young man persuaded him to withdraw the limit at roulette, and spent a large sum in testing a system for breaking the wheel, given to him by a friend lately returned from Monte Carlo.
That great house of cards, the new Cursaal, had not yet arisen; and its table-d'hôte, reading-room, and profane mysteries of roulette and rouge-et-noir, found temporary domicile in a narrow, disreputable-looking den in the main street, where accommodation of all kinds, but especially for dinner, was scanty in the extreme.
Young women attracted by the treacherous lure of the spinning roulette wheel or the fascination of the shuffle of cards have squandered away their own and their husband's money with often tragic results, and many of them have gone even further into the moral quagmire in the hope of earning enough money to pay their losses and keep from their families the knowledge of their gambling.
D.H. Hill on the right, though part of his force had given way, still held the Roulette House and the sunken road, and the troops in the West Wood were well protected from the Northern batteries. The one weak point was the gap occupied by Greene's Federals, which lay between Grigsby's regiments in the northern angle of the West Wood and Hood's division at the Dunkard Church.
Henshaw had noticed him. He was coming on. The Montague girl hailed him as he left the set. "Hullo, old trouper. I caught you actin' again to-day, right out before the white folks. Well, so far so good. But say, I'm glad all that roulette and stuff was for the up-and-down stage and not on the level. I'd certainly have lost everything but my make-up. So long, Kid!"
The 'Bloody Lane, already piled with dead, and enfiladed from a height to the north-west, was carried by a brilliant charge; and when the Roulette Farm, a strong defensive post, was stormed, Longstreet fell back to the turnpike through the wreck of the artillery. But at this critical juncture the Federals halted. They had not been supported by their batteries.
Dice rolled, bounced, and tumbled to a stop on the gleaming green felt. People cheered or groaned. The roulette wheels were in a different section. The blackjack dealers were beyond the roulette wheels. At the far end of the casino, behind bars, cashiers exchanged chips for money or vice versa. Cashing in your chips, for real, Oliver thought. He pushed $1000 toward a cashier. "What do you want?"
He finds it restores and freshens him, after the turmoil of London, to win a few hundreds at roulette in the course of an afternoon among the palms and cactuses and pure breezes of Monte Carlo. The country, say I, for a jaded intellect! However, we never on any account actually stop in the Principality itself. Sir Charles thinks Monte Carlo is not a sound address for a financier's letters.
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