each
colour, make a _coup_. The same number of parcels being dealt for each
colour, the dealer says, "_Apres_," "After." This is a "doublet," called
in the amiable French tongue, "_un refait_," by which neither party
wins, unless both colours come to _thirty-one_, which the dealer
announces by saying, "_Un refait Trente-et-un_," and he wins half the
stakes posted on both colours. He, however, does not take the money, but
removes it to the middle line, and the players may change the _venue_ of
their stakes if they please. This is called the first "prison," or
_la premiere prison_, and, if they win their next event, they draw the
entire stake. In case of another "_refait_," the money is removed into
the third line, which is called the second prison. So you see that there
are wheels within wheels, and Lord Chancellor King's dictum, that walls
can be built higher, but there should be no prison within a prison, is
sometimes reversed.

When this happens the dealer wins all.

'The cards are sometimes cut for which colour shall be dealt first; but,
in general, the first parcel is for _black_, and the second for _red_.
The odds against a "_refait_" turning up are usually reckoned as 63 to
1. The bankers, however, acknowledge that they expect it twice in three
deals, and there are generally from twenty-nine to thirty-two coups in
each deal. The odds in favour of winning several times are about the
same as in the game of Pharaon, and are as delusive. 'He who goes to
Hombourg and expects to see any melodramatic manifestation of rage,
disappointment, and despair in the losing players, reckons without his
host. Winners or losers seldom speak above a whisper; and the only sound
that is heard above the suppressed buzz of conversation, the muffled
jingle of the money on the green cloth, the "sweep" of the croupiers'
rakes, and the ticking of the very ornate French clocks on the
mantel-pieces, is the impassibly metallic voice of the banker, as he
proclaims his "_Rouge perd_," or "_Couleur gagne_." People are too
genteel at Hombourg-von-der-Hohe to scream, to yell, to fall into
fainting fits, or go into convulsions, because they have lost four or
five thousand francs or so in a single coup.

'I have heard of one gentleman, indeed, who, after a ruinous loss, put
a pistol to his head, and discharging it, spattered his brains over the
Roulette wheel. It was said that the banker, looking up calmly, called
out--'_Triple Zero,' 'Treble Nothi