rests upon three things:  the impassibility of the bank; the even results called “drawn games,” when half the money goes to the bank; and the notorious bad faith authorized by the government, in refusing to hold or pay the player’s stakes except optionally.  In a word, the gambling-house, which refuses the game of a rich and cool player, devours the fortune of the foolish and obstinate one, who is carried away by the rapid movement of the machinery of the game.  The croupiers at “trente et quarante” move nearly as fast as the ball.

Philippe had ended by acquiring the sang-froid of a commanding general, which enables him to keep his eye clear and his mind prompt in the midst of tumult.  He had reached that statesmanship of gambling which in Paris, let us say in passing, is the livelihood of thousands who are strong enough to look every night into an abyss without getting a vertigo.  With his four hundred francs, Philippe resolved to make his fortune that day.  He put aside, in his boots, two hundred francs, and kept the other two hundred in his pocket.  At three o’clock he went to the gambling-house (which is now turned into the theatre of the Palais-Royal), where the bank accepted the largest sums.  He came out half an hour later with seven thousand francs in his pocket.  Then he went to see Florentine, paid the five hundred francs which he owed to her, and proposed a supper at the Rocher de Cancale after the theatre.  Returning to his game, along the rue de Sentier, he stopped at Giroudeau’s newspaper-office to notify him of the gala.  By six o’clock Philippe had won twenty-five thousand francs, and stopped playing at the end of ten minutes as he had promised himself to do.  That night, by ten o’clock, he had won seventy-five thousand francs.  After the supper, which was magnificent, Philippe, by that time drunk and confident, went back to his play at midnight.  In defiance of the rule he had imposed upon himself, he played for an hour and doubled his fortune.  The bankers, from whom, by his system of playing, he had extracted one hundred and fifty thousand francs, looked at him with curiosity.

“Will he go away now, or will he stay?” they said to each other by a glance.  “If he stays he is lost.”

Philippe thought he had struck a vein of luck, and stayed.  Towards three in the morning, the hundred and fifty thousand francs had gone back to the bank.  The colonel, who had imbibed a considerable quantity of grog while playing, left the place in a drunken state, which the cold of the outer air only increased.  A waiter from the gambling-house followed him, picked him up, and took him to one of those horrible houses at the door of which, on a hanging lamp, are the words:  “Lodgings for the night.”  The waiter paid for the ruined gambler, who was put to bed, where he remained till Christmas night.  The managers of gambling-houses have some consideration for their customers, especially for high players.  Philippe awoke about seven o’clock in the evening, his mouth parched, his face swollen, and he himself in the grip of a nervous fever.  The strength of his constitution enabled him to get home on foot, where meanwhile he had, without willing it, brought mourning, desolation, poverty, and death.