ever since
the institution of the lottery. Accordingly, Madame Descoings laid
heavy stakes on that particular number, as well as on all the
combinations of the three numbers. The last mattress remaining to her
bed was the place where she stored her savings; she unsewed the
ticking, put in from time to time the bit of gold saved from her
needs, wrapped carefully in wool, and then sewed the mattress up
again. She intended, at the last drawing, to risk all her savings on
the different combinations of her treasured trey.

This passion, so universally condemned, has never been fairly studied.
No one has understood this opium of poverty. The lottery, all-powerful
fairy of the poor, bestowed the gift of magic hopes. The turn of the
wheel which opens to the gambler a vista of gold and happiness, lasts
no longer than a flash of lightning, but the lottery gave five days'
existence to that magnificent flash. What social power can to-day, for
the sum of five sous, give us five days' happiness and launch us
ideally into all the joys of civilization? Tobacco, a craving far more
immoral than play, destroys the body, attacks the mind, and stupefies
a nation; while the lottery did nothing of the kind. This passion,
moreover, was forced to keep within limits by the long periods that
occurred between the drawings, and by the choice of wheels which each
investor individually clung to. Madame Descoings never staked on any
but the "wheel of Paris." Full of confidence that the trey cherished
for twenty-one years was about to triumph, she now imposed upon
herself enormous privations, that she might stake a large amount of
savings upon the last drawing of the year. When she dreamed her
cabalistic visions (for all dreams did not correspond with the numbers
of the lottery), she went and told them to Joseph, who was the sole
being who would listen, and not only not scold her, but give her the
kindly words with which an artist knows how to soothe the follies of
the mind. All great talents respect and understand a real passion;
they explain it to themselves by finding the roots of it in their own
hearts or minds. Joseph's ideas was, that his brother loved tobacco
and liquors, Maman Descoings loved her trey, his mother loved God,
Desroches the younger loved lawsuits, Desroches the elder loved
angling,--in short, all the world, he said, loved something. He
himself loved the "beau ideal" in all things; he loved the poetry of
Lord Byron, the painting