With a sinking heart he watched Dolokhov's hands and thought,
"Now then, make haste and let me have this card and I'll take my cap
and drive home to supper with Denisov, Natasha, and Sonya, and will
certainly never touch a card again." At that moment his home life,
jokes with Petya, talks with Sonya, duets with Natasha, piquet with his
father, and even his comfortable bed in the house on the Povarskaya rose
before him with such vividness, clearness, and charm that it seemed as
if it were all a lost and unappreciated bliss, long past. He could not
conceive that a stupid chance, letting the seven be dealt to the right
rather than to the left, might deprive him of all this happiness, newly
appreciated and newly illumined, and plunge him into the depths of
unknown and undefined misery. That could not be, yet he awaited with
a sinking heart the movement of Dolokhov's hands. Those broad, reddish
hands, with hairy wrists visible from under the shirt cuffs, laid down
the pack and took up a glass and a pipe that were handed him.

"So you are not afraid to play with me?" repeated Dolokhov, and as if
about to tell a good story he put down the cards, leaned back in his
chair, and began deliberately with a smile:

"Yes, gentlemen, I've been told there's a rumor going about Moscow that
I'm a sharper, so I advise you to be careful."

"Come now, deal!" exclaimed Rostov.

"Oh, those Moscow gossips!" said Dolokhov, and he took up the cards with
a smile.

"Aah!" Rostov almost screamed lifting both hands to his head. The seven
he needed was lying uppermost, the first card in the pack. He had lost
more than he could pay.

"Still, don't ruin yourself!" said Dolokhov with a side glance at Rostov
as he continued to deal.

CHAPTER XIV

An hour and a half later most of the players were but little interested
in their own play.

The whole interest was concentrated on Rostov. Instead of sixteen
hundred rubles he had a long column of figures scored against him,
which he had reckoned up to ten thousand, but that now, as he vaguely
supposed, must have risen to fifteen thousand. In reality it already
exceeded twenty thousand rubles. Dolokhov was no longer listening to
stories or telling them, but followed every movement of Rostov's hands
and occasionally ran his eyes over the score against him. He had decided
to play until that score reached forty-three thousand. He had fixed on
that number because forty-three was the sum of his a