Ch. 1 - The Talisman - Page 2

incarnate. If the young man had
noticed this sorry Cerberus, perhaps he would have said, "There is
only a pack of cards in that heart of his."

The stranger did not heed this warning writ in flesh and blood, put
here, no doubt, by Providence, who has set loathing on the threshold
of all evil haunts. He walked boldly into the saloon, where the rattle
of coin brought his senses under the dazzling spell of an agony of
greed. Most likely he had been drawn thither by that most convincing
of Jean Jacques' eloquent periods, which expresses, I think, this
melancholy thought, "Yes, I can imagine that a man may take to
gambling when he sees only his last shilling between him and death."

There is an illusion about a gambling saloon at night as vulgar as
that of a bloodthirsty drama, and just as effective. The rooms are
filled with players and onlookers, with poverty-stricken age, which
drags itself thither in search of stimulation, with excited faces, and
revels that began in wine, to end shortly in the Seine. The passion is
there in full measure, but the great number of the actors prevents you
from seeing the gambling-demon face to face. The evening is a harmony
or chorus in which all take part, to which each instrument in the
orchestra contributes his share. You would see there plenty of
respectable people who have come in search of diversion, for which
they pay as they pay for the pleasures of the theatre, or of gluttony,
or they come hither as to some garret where they cheapen poignant
regrets for three months to come.

Do you understand all the force and frenzy in a soul which impatiently
waits for the opening of a gambling hell? Between the daylight gambler
and the player at night there is the same difference that lies between
a careless husband and the lover swooning under his lady's window.
Only with morning comes the real throb of the passion and the craving
in its stark horror. Then you can admire the real gambler, who has
neither eaten, slept, thought, nor lived, he has so smarted under the
scourge of his martingale, so suffered on the rack of his desire for a
coup of _trente-et-quarante_. At that accursed hour you encounter eyes
whose calmness terrifies you, faces that fascinate, glances that seem
as if they had power to turn the cards over and consume them. The
grandest hours of a gambling saloon are not the opening ones. If Spain
has bull-fights, and Rome once had her gladiators, Paris waxes proud
of her Palais-Royal, where the inevitable _roulettes_ cause blood to
flow in streams, and the public can have the pleasure of watching
without fear of their feet slipping in it.

Take a quiet peep at the arena. How bare it looks! The paper on the
walls is greasy to the height