es and their gains rests upon three things: the
impassibility of the bank; the even results called "drawn games," when
half the money goes to the bank; and the notorious bad faith
authorized by the government, in refusing to hold or pay the player's
stakes except optionally. In a word, the gambling-house, which refuses
the game of a rich and cool player, devours the fortune of the foolish
and obstinate one, who is carried away by the rapid movement of the
machinery of the game. The croupiers at "trente et quarante" move
nearly as fast as the ball.

Philippe had ended by acquiring the sang-froid of a commanding
general, which enables him to keep his eye clear and his mind prompt
in the midst of tumult. He had reached that statesmanship of gambling
which in Paris, let us say in passing, is the livelihood of thousands
who are strong enough to look every night into an abyss without
getting a vertigo. With his four hundred francs, Philippe resolved to
make his fortune that day. He put aside, in his boots, two hundred
francs, and kept the other two hundred in his pocket. At three o'clock
he went to the gambling-house (which is now turned into the theatre of
the Palais-Royal), where the bank accepted the largest sums. He came
out half an hour later with seven thousand francs in his pocket. Then
he went to see Florentine, paid the five hundred francs which he owed
to her, and proposed a supper at the Rocher de Cancale after the
theatre. Returning to his game, along the rue de Sentier, he stopped
at Giroudeau's newspaper-office to notify him of the gala. By six
o'clock Philippe had won twenty-five thousand francs, and stopped
playing at the end of ten minutes as he had promised himself to do.
That night, by ten o'clock, he had won seventy-five thousand francs.
After the supper, which was magnificent, Philippe, by that time drunk
and confident, went back to his play at midnight. In defiance of the
rule he had imposed upon himself, he played for an hour and doubled
his fortune. The bankers, from whom, by his system of playing, he had
extracted one hundred and fifty thousand francs, looked at him with
curiosity.

"Will he go away now, or will he stay?" they said to each other by a
glance. "If he stays he is lost."

Philippe thought he had struck a vein of luck, and stayed. Towards
three in the morning, the hundred and fifty thousand francs had gone
back to the bank. The colonel, who had imbibed a considerable quantity
of grog w