during two or three storms at sea. Then, with an
intuitive scoundrelism, or Machiavelism, surprising in one of my age, I
went and stood in the door, and looked about me in the rooms, though
I saw nothing; for both mind and eyes hovered about that fateful green
cloth.

"That evening fixes the date of a first observation of a physiological
kind; to it I owe a kind of insight into certain mysteries of our double
nature that I have since been enabled to penetrate. I had my back turned
on the table where my future felicity lay at stake, a felicity but so
much the more intense that it was criminal. Between me and the players
stood a wall of onlookers some five feet deep, who were chatting; the
murmur of voices drowned the clinking of gold, which mingled in
the sounds sent up by this orchestra; yet, despite all obstacles, I
distinctly heard the words of the two players by a gift accorded to the
passions, which enables them to annihilate time and space. I saw the
points they made; I knew which of the two turned up the king as well as
if I had actually seen the cards; at a distance of ten paces, in short,
the fortunes of play blanched my face.

"My father suddenly went by, and then I knew what the Scripture meant by
'The Spirit of God passed before his face.' I had won. I slipped through
the crowd of men who had gathered about the players with the quickness
of an eel escaping through a broken mesh in a net. My nerves thrilled
with joy instead of anguish. I felt like some criminal on the way to
torture released by a chance meeting with the king. It happened that a
man with a decoration found himself short by forty francs. Uneasy eyes
suspected me; I turned pale, and drops of perspiration stood on my
forehead, I was well punished, I thought, for having robbed my father.
Then the kind little stout man said, in a voice like an angel's surely,
'All these gentlemen have paid their stakes,' and put down the forty
francs himself. I raised my head in triumph upon the players. After I
had returned the money I had taken from it to my father's purse, I left
my winnings with that honest and worthy gentleman, who continued to win.
As soon as I found myself possessed of a hundred and sixty francs, I
wrapped them up in my handkerchief, so that they could neither move or
rattle on the way back; and I played no more.

"'What were you doing at the card-table?' said my father as we stepped
into the carriage.

"'I was looking on,' I answered, t