Though the gains of such a life are, as I have said, very great, yet the expenses are enormous.  Our appearance and retinue was too splendid for the narrow mind of Pippi, who was always crying out at my extravagance, though obliged to own that his own meanness and parsimony would never have achieved the great victories which my generosity had won.  With all our success, our capital was not very great.  That speech to the Duke of Courland, for instance, was a mere boast as far as the two hundred thousand florins at three months were concerned.  We had no credit, and no money beyond that on our table, and should have been forced to fly if his Highness had won and accepted our bills.  Sometimes, too, we were hit very hard.  A bank is a certainty, almost; but now and then a bad day will come; and men who have the courage of good fortune, at least, ought to meet bad luck well:  the former, believe me, is the harder task of the two.

One of these evil chances befell us in the Duke of Baden’s territory, at Mannheim.  Pippi, who was always on the look-out for business, offered to make a bank at the inn where we put up, and where the officers of the Duke’s cuirassiers supped; and some small play accordingly took place, and some wretched crowns and louis changed hands:  I trust, rather to the advantage of these poor gentlemen of the army, who are surely the poorest of all devils under the sun.

But, as ill luck would have it, a couple of young students from the neighbouring University of Heidelberg, who had come to Mannheim for their quarter’s revenue, and so had some hundred of dollars between them, were introduced to the table, and, having never played before, began to win (as is always the case).  As ill luck would have it, too, they were tipsy, and against tipsiness I have often found the best calculations of play fail entirely.  They played in the most perfectly insane way, and yet won always.  Every card they backed turned up in their favour.  They had won a hundred louis from us in ten minutes; and, seeing that Pippi was growing angry and the luck against us, I was for shutting up the bank for the night, saying the play was only meant for a joke, and that now we had had enough.

But Pippi, who had quarrelled with me that day, was determined to proceed, and the upshot was, that the students played and won more; then they lent money to the officers, who began to win, too; and in this ignoble way, in a tavern room thick with tobacco-smoke, across a deal table besmeared with beer and liquor, and to a parcel of hungry subalterns and a pair of beardless students, three of the most skilful and renowned players in Europe lost seventeen hundred louis!  I blush now when I think of it.  It was like Charles XII or Richard Coeur de Lion falling before a petty fortress and an unknown hand (as my friend Mr. Johnson wrote), and was, in fact, a most shameful defeat.