Ch. 1 - The Talisman

Towards the end of the month of October 1829 a young man entered the
Palais-Royal just as the gaming-houses opened, agreeably to the law
which protects a passion by its very nature easily excisable. He
mounted the staircase of one of the gambling hells distinguished by
the number 36, without too much deliberation.

"Your hat, sir, if you please?" a thin, querulous voice called out. A
little old man, crouching in the darkness behind a railing, suddenly
rose and exhibited his features, carved after a mean design.

As you enter a gaming-house the law despoils you of your hat at the
outset. Is it by way of a parable, a divine revelation? Or by exacting
some pledge or other, is not an infernal compact implied? Is it done
to compel you to preserve a respectful demeanor towards those who are
about to gain money of you? Or must the detective, who squats in our
social sewers, know the name of your hatter, or your own, if you
happen to have written it on the lining inside? Or, after all, is the
measurement of your skull required for the compilation of statistics
as to the cerebral capacity of gamblers? The executive is absolutely
silent on this point. But be sure of this, that though you have
scarcely taken a step towards the tables, your hat no more belongs to
you now than you belong to yourself. Play possesses you, your fortune,
your cap, your cane, your cloak.

As you go out, it will be made clear to you, by a savage irony, that
Play has yet spared you something, since your property is returned.
For all that, if you bring a new hat with you, you will have to pay
for the knowledge that a special costume is needed for a gambler.

The evident astonishment with which the young man took a numbered
tally in exchange for his hat, which was fortunately somewhat rubbed
at the brim, showed clearly enough that his mind was yet untainted;
and the little old man, who had wallowed from his youth up in the
furious pleasures of a gambler's life, cast a dull, indifferent glance
over him, in which a philosopher might have seen wretchedness lying in
the hospital, the vagrant lives of ruined folk, inquests on numberless
suicides, life-long penal servitude and transportations to
Guazacoalco.

His pallid, lengthy visage appeared like a haggard embodiment of the
passion reduced to its simplest terms. There were traces of past
anguish in its wrinkles. He supported life on the glutinous soups at
Darcet's, and gambled away his meagre earnings day by day. Like some
old hackney which takes no heed of the strokes of the whip, nothing
could move him now. The stifled groans of ruined players, as they
passed out, their mute imprecations, their stupefied faces, found him
impassive. He was the spirit of Play