e of
wax-lights, peering with eagerness and tremulous from age and excitement
as the cards fell from the banker's hands, his blanched lips muttering
each word after the croupier, and his wasted cheek quivering as the
chances inclined against him. Here was a bold and manly face, flushed
and heated, whose bloodshot eye ranged quickly over the board, while
every now and then some effort to seem calm and smile would cross
the features, and in its working show the dreadful struggle that was
maintained within. And then again a beautiful girl, her dark eye dilated
almost to a look of wild insanity, her lips parted, her cheeks marked
with patches of white and red, and her fair hands clenched, while her
bosom heaved and fell as though some pent-up agony was eating at her
very heart.

At the end of the table was a vacant chair, beside which an officer in
a Prussian uniform was standing, while before him was a small
brass-clasped box. Curious to know what this meant, I turned to see
to which of those about me I might venture to address a question, when
suddenly my curiosity became satisfied without inquiry. A loud voice
talking German with a rough accent, the heavy tramp of a cavalry boot
clanking with large spurs, announced the approach of some one who cared
little for the conventional silence of the rooms; and as the crowd
opened I saw an old man in blue uniform, covered with stars, elbow his
way towards the chair. His eyebrows of shaggy grey almost concealed
his eyes as effectually as his heavy moustache did his mouth. He walked
lame, and leaned on a stick, which, as he took his place in the chair,
he placed unceremoniously on the table before him. The box, which was
opened the moment he sat down, he now drew towards him, and plunging his
hand into it drew forth a handful of napoleons, and, without waiting to
count, he threw on the table, uttering in a thick guttural voice the one
word 'Rouge.' The impassive coldness of the croupier as he pronounced
his habitual exordium seemed to move the old man's impatience, as he
rattled his fingers hurriedly among the gold and muttered some broken
words of German between his teeth. The enormous sum he betted drew
every eye towards his part of the table--of all which he seemed totally
regardless, as he raked in his winnings, or frowned with a heavy
lowering look as often as fortune turned against him. Marshal
Blucher--for it was he--was an impassioned gambler, and needed not the
excitement