ball as it
dances into its pigeonhole at roulette, of the monotonous chant of "Make
your game, gentlemen," or "The game is made." The croupiers rake in
their gains or poke out the winnings with the passive regularity of
machines; the gamblers sit round the table with the vacant solemnity of
undertakers. The general air of the company is that of a number of
well-to-do people bored out of their lives, and varying their boredom
with quiet nods to the croupier and assiduous prickings of little cards.

The boredom is apparently greatest at rouge-et-noir, where the circle is
more aristocratic and thousands can be lost and won in a night.
Everybody looks tired, absent, inattentive; nobody takes much notice of
his neighbour or of the spectators looking on; nobody cares to speak; a
finger suffices to direct the croupier to push the stake on to the
desired spot, a nod or a look to indicate the winner. The game goes on
in a dull uniformity; nobody varies his stake; a few napoleons are added
to or subtracted from the heaps before each as the minutes go on;
sometimes a little sum is done on a paper beside the player; but there
is the same impassive countenance, the same bored expression everywhere.
Now and then one player gets quietly up and another sits quietly down.
But there is nothing startling or dramatic, no frenzies of hope or
exclamations of despair, nothing of the gambler of fiction with "his
hands clasped to his burning forehead," and the like. To any one who is
not fascinated by the mere look of rolls of napoleons pushed from one
colour to another, or of gold raked about in little heaps, there is
something very difficult to understand in the spell which a gaming-table
exercises. Roulette is a little more amusing, as it is more intelligible
to the looker-on. The stakes are smaller, the company changes oftener,
and is socially more varied. There is not such a dead, heavy earnestness
about these riskers of five-franc pieces as about the more desperate
gamblers of rouge-et-noir; the outside fringe of lookers-on bend over
with their stakes to back "a run of luck," and there is a certain quiet
buzz of interest when the game seems going against the bank. There is
always someone going and coming, over-dressed girls lean over and drop
their stake and disappear, young clerks bring their quarter's salary,
the casual visitor "doesn't mind risking a few francs" at roulette.

But even the excitement of roulette is of the gravest and d