with which he played with his chum in the cell; whereupon
other scholars of the religious house came to me, some to be taught and
others to play, so with some I played, and others I taught, but neither
to those who could play, or to those who could not, did I teach the
elegant tricks which I learnt from the muleteers. Well, the scholars
came to me for the sake of the cards, and the porter and the cook of the
religious house, who could both play very well, came also; at last I
became tired of playing for nothing, so I borrowed a few bits of silver
from the cook, and played against the porter, and by means of my tricks I
won money from the porter, and then I paid the cook the bits of silver
which I had borrowed of him; and played with him, and won a little of his
money, which I let him win back again, as I had lived long enough in a
religious house to know that it is dangerous to take money from the cook.
In a little time, Shorsha, there was scarcely anything going on in the
house but card-playing; the almoner played with me, and so did the sub-
rector, and I won money from both; not too much, however, lest they
should tell the rector, who had the character of a very austere man, and
of being a bit of a saint; however, the thief of a porter, whose money I
had won, informed the rector of what was going on, and one day the rector
sent for me into his private apartment, and gave me so long and pious a
lecture upon the heinous sin of card-playing, that I thought I should
sink into the ground; after about half-an-hour's inveighing against card-
playing, he began to soften his tone, and with a long sigh told me that
at one time of his life he had been a young man himself, and had
occasionally used the cards; he then began to ask me some questions about
card-playing, which questions I afterwards found were to pump from me
what I knew about the science. After a time he asked me whether I had
got my cards with me, and on my telling him I had, he expressed a wish to
see them, whereupon I took the pack out of my pocket, and showed it to
him; he looked at it very attentively, and at last, giving another deep
sigh, he said, that though he was nearly weaned from the vanities of the
world, he had still an inclination to see whether he had entirely lost
the little skill which at one time he possessed. When I heard him speak
in this manner, I told him that if his reverence was inclined for a game
of cards, I should be very happy to play