s revenue, and so had some hundred of dollars between
them, were introduced to the table, and, having never played before,
began to win (as is always the case). As ill luck would have it, too,
they were tipsy, and against tipsiness I have often found the best
calculations of play fail entirely. They played in the most perfectly
insane way, and yet won always. Every card they backed turned up in
their favour. They had won a hundred louis from us in ten minutes; and,
seeing that Pippi was growing angry and the luck against us, I was for
shutting up the bank for the night, saying the play was only meant for a
joke, and that now we had had enough.

But Pippi, who had quarrelled with me that day, was determined to
proceed, and the upshot was, that the students played and won more;
then they lent money to the officers, who began to win, too; and in this
ignoble way, in a tavern room thick with tobacco-smoke, across a
deal table besmeared with beer and liquor, and to a parcel of hungry
subalterns and a pair of beardless students, three of the most skilful
and renowned players in Europe lost seventeen hundred louis! I blush
now when I think of it. It was like Charles XII or Richard Coeur de Lion
falling before a petty fortress and an unknown hand (as my friend Mr.
Johnson wrote), and was, in fact, a most shameful defeat.

Nor was this the only defeat. When our poor conquerors had gone off,
bewildered with the treasure which fortune had flung in their way
(one of these students was called the Baron de Clootz, perhaps he who
afterwards lost his head at Paris), Pippi resumed the quarrel of the
morning, and some exceedingly high words passed between us. Among other
things I recollect I knocked him down with a stool, and was for flinging
him out of the window; but my uncle, who was cool, and had been
keeping Lent with his usual solemnity, interposed between us, and a
reconciliation took place, Pippi apologising and confessing he had been
wrong.

I ought to have doubted, however, the sincerity of the treacherous
Italian; indeed, as I never before believed a word that he said in his
life, I know not why I was so foolish as to credit him now, and go to
bed, leaving the keys of our cash-box with him. It contained, after our
loss to the cuirassiers, in bills and money, near upon L8000 sterling.
Pippi insisted that our reconciliation should be ratified over a bowl of
hot wine, and I have no doubt put some soporific drug into the liquor;