des-de-chasse; to
all these honest fiddlers and trumpeters who play so delectably. Were
Lenoir's bank to break, the whole little city would shut up; and all the
Noirbourgers wish him prosperity, and benefit by his good fortune.

Three years since the Noirbourgers underwent a mighty panic. There
came, at a time when the chief Lenoir was at Paris, and the reins
of government were in the hands of his younger brother, a company of
adventurers from Belgium, with a capital of three hundred thousand
francs, and an infallible system for playing rouge et noir, and they
boldly challenged the bank of Lenoir, and sat down before his croupiers,
and defied him. They called themselves in their pride the Contrebanque
de Noirbourg: they had their croupiers and punters, even as Lenoir
had his: they had their rouleaux of Napoleons, stamped with their
Contrebanquish seal:--and they began to play.

As when two mighty giants step out of a host and engage, the armies
stand still in expectation, and the puny privates and commonalty remain
quiet to witness the combat of the tremendous champions of the war: so
it is said that when the Contrebanque arrived, and ranged itself before
the officers of Lenoir--rouleau to rouleau, bank-note to bank-note, war
for war, controlment for controlment--all the minor punters and gamblers
ceased their peddling play, and looked on in silence, round the verdant
plain where the great combat was to be decided.

Not used to the vast operations of war, like his elder brother, Lenoir
junior, the lieutenant, telegraphed to his absent chief the news of the
mighty enemy who had come down upon him, asked for instructions, and in
the meanwhile met the foe-man like a man. The Contrebanque of Noirbourg
gallantly opened its campaign.

The Lenoir bank was defeated day after day, in numerous savage
encounters. The tactics of the Contrebanquist generals were
irresistible: their infernal system bore down everything before it, and
they marched onwards terrible and victorious as the Macedonian phalanx.
Tuesday, a loss of eighteen thousand florins; Wednesday, a loss of
twelve thousand florins; Thursday, a loss of forty thousand florins:
night after night, the young Lenoir had to chronicle these disasters
in melancholy despatches to his chief. What was to be done? Night after
night, the Noirbourgers retired home doubtful and disconsolate; the
horrid Contrebanquists gathered up their spoils and retired to a
victorious supper. How