At noon, on the third day, Mr. Risque having engaged a frugal bed at a
little distance from Wisbaden, enters the grand saloon of the Kursaal,
and turning to the right, sees before him a perspective, to which not
all the marvels of art or nature afford comparison: a snug little room,
with a table of green baize in the centre of the floor, and about the
table sundry folks of various ages and degrees, before each a heap of
glittering coins, and in the midst of all a something which moves
forever, with a hurtle and a hum--the roulette.
Mark them! the weak, the profligate, the daring. There is old age,
watching the play, with its voice like a baby's cry; and the paper
whereon it keeps tremulous tally swimming upon eyes of perpetual
twilight.
The boy ventures his first gold piece with the resolve that, win or
lose, he will stake no more. He wins, and lies. At his side stands
beautiful Sin, forgetting its guilt and coquetry for its avarice. The
pale defaulter from over the sea hazards like one whose treasure is a
burden upon his neck, and the _roue_--blank, emotionless,
remorseless--doubling at every loss, walks penniless away to dinner with
a better appetite than he who saves a nation or dies for a truth.
The daintily dressed _coupeurs_ are in their chairs, eyeless, but
omniscient; the ball goes heedlessly, slaying or anointing where it
stays, and the gold as it is raked up clinks and glistens, as if it
struck men's hearts and found them as hard and sounding.
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