Chapter 4

A NORMAL EVENING

/Mouche/ is a game played with five cards dealt to each player, and
one turned over. The turned-over card is trumps. At each round the
player is at liberty to run his chances or to abstain from playing his
card. If he abstains he loses nothing but his own stake, for as long
as there are no forfeits in the basket each player puts in a trifling
sum. If he plays and wins a trick he is paid /pro rata/ to the stake;
that is, if there are five sous in the basket, he wins one sou. The
player who fails to win a trick is made /mouche/; he has to pay the
whole stake, which swells the basket for the next game. Those who
decline to play throw down their cards during the game; but their play
is held to be null. The players can exchange their cards with the
remainder of the pack, as in ecarte, but only by order of sequence, so
that the first and second players may, and sometimes do, absorb the
remainder of the pack between them. The turned-over trump card belongs
to the dealer, who is always the last; he has the right to exchange it
for any card in his own hand. One powerful card is of more importance
than all the rest; it is called Mistigris. Mistigris is the knave of
clubs.

This game, simple as it is, is not lacking in interest. The cupidity
natural to mankind develops in it; so does diplomatic wiliness; also
play of countenance. At the hotel du Guenic, each of the players took
twenty counters, representing five sous; which made the sum total of
the stake for each game five farthings, a large amount in the eyes of
this company. Supposing some extraordinary luck, fifty sous might be
won,--more capital than any person in Guerande spent in the course of
any one day. Consequently Mademoiselle de Pen-Hoel put into this game
(the innocence of which is only surpassed in the nomenclature of the
Academy by that of La Bataille) a passion corresponding to that of the
hunters after big game. Mademoiselle Zephirine, who went shares in the
game with the baroness, attached no less importance to it. To put up
one farthing for the chance of winning five, game after game, was to
this confirmed hoarder a mighty financial operation, into which she
put as much mental action as the most eager speculator at the Bourse
expends during the rise and fall of consols.

By a certain diplomatic convention, dating from September, 1825, when
Mademoiselle de Pen-Hoel lost thirty-five sous, the game was to cease
as soon as a person losing ten sous should express the wish to retire.
Politeness did not allow the rest to give the retiring player the pain
of seeing the game go on without him. But, as all passions have their
Jesuitism, the chevalier and the baron, those wily politicians, had
found a means of eluding this