thout YOU, my dear wife, what would have become of
me? You beheld the beginning and the end of the gaming fury in me, which
I now detest; and it is not to me, but to you alone, that the victory
must be ascribed.'(95)

(95) Dusaulx, _De la Passion du Jeu_.

A very pretty anecdote is told of such a wife and a gaming husband.

In order to simplify the signs of loss and gain, so as not to be
overburdened with the weight of gold and silver, the French players used
to carry the representation of their fortunes in small boxes, more or
less elegant. A lady (who else could have thought of such a device?),
trembling for the fate of her husband, made him a present of one of
these dread boxes. This little master-piece of conjugal and maternal
affection represented a wife in the attitude of supplication, and
weeping children, seeming to say to their father--_THINK OF US!_....

It is, therefore, only with the view of avenging good and honourable
women, that I now proceed to speak of those who have disgraced their
sex.

I have already described a remarkable gamestress--the Persian Queen
Parysatis.(96)

(96) Chapter III.

There were no gamestresses among the Greeks; and the Roman women were
always too much occupied with their domestic affairs to find time for
play. What will our modern ladies think, when I state that the Emperor
Augustus scarcely wore a garment which had not been woven by his wife,
his sister, or grand-daughters.(97)

(97) Veste non temere alia quam domestica usus est, ab uxore et filia
nepotibusque confecta. Suet. in Vita Augusti.

Although deeply corrupted under Nero and the sovereigns that resembled
him, the Roman women never gambled among themselves except during the
celebration of the festival of the Bona Dea. This ceremonial, so often
profaned with licentiousness, was not attended by desperate gambling.
The most depraved women abstained from it, even when that mania was at
its height, not only around the Capitol, but even in the remainder of
the Empire.

Contemporary authors, who have not spared the Roman ladies, never
reproached them with this vice, which, in modern times, has been
desperately practised by women who in licentiousness vied with
Messalina.

In France, women who wished to gamble were, at first, obliged to keep
the thing secret; for if it became known they lost caste. In the reign
of Louis XIV., and still more in that of Louis XV., they became
bolder, and the wives of the