kept an
eye upon the stakes, performed the necessary reckoning, and decided
disputes as they arose.

In the last resort they always called in the Casino police, and the
disputes would immediately come to an end. Policemen were stationed
about the Casino in ordinary costume, and mingled with the spectators
so as to make it impossible to recognise them. In particular they kept
a lookout for pickpockets and swindlers, who simply swanned in the
roulette salons, and reaped a rich harvest. Indeed, in every direction
money was being filched from pockets or purses--though, of course, if
the attempt miscarried, a great uproar ensued. One had only to approach
a roulette table, begin to play, and then openly grab some one else's
winnings, for a din to be raised, and the thief to start vociferating
that the stake was HIS; and, if the coup had been carried out with
sufficient skill, and the witnesses wavered at all in their testimony,
the thief would as likely as not succeed in getting away with the
money, provided that the sum was not a large one--not large enough to
have attracted the attention of the croupiers or some fellow-player.
Moreover, if it were a stake of insignificant size, its true owner
would sometimes decline to continue the dispute, rather than become
involved in a scandal. Conversely, if the thief was detected, he was
ignominiously expelled the building.

Upon all this the Grandmother gazed with open-eyed curiosity; and, on
some thieves happening to be turned out of the place, she was
delighted. Trente-et-quarante interested her but little; she preferred
roulette, with its ever-revolving wheel. At length she expressed a wish
to view the game closer; whereupon in some mysterious manner, the
lacqueys and other officious agents (especially one or two ruined Poles
of the kind who keep offering their services to successful gamblers and
foreigners in general) at once found and cleared a space for the old
lady among the crush, at the very centre of one of the tables, and next
to the chief croupier; after which they wheeled her chair thither. Upon
this a number of visitors who were not playing, but only looking on
(particularly some Englishmen with their families), pressed closer
forward towards the table, in order to watch the old lady from among
the ranks of the gamblers. Many a lorgnette I saw turned in her
direction, and the croupiers' hopes rose high that such an eccentric
player was about to provide them with somet