the sake of money. Yet clearly she did
need some money, and that as soon as possible, and for a special
purpose. Well, she promised to explain matters, and I departed. There
was a tremendous crowd in the gaming-rooms. What an arrogant, greedy
crowd it was! I pressed forward towards the middle of the room until I
had secured a seat at a croupier's elbow. Then I began to play in timid
fashion, venturing only twenty or thirty gulden at a time. Meanwhile, I
observed and took notes. It seemed to me that calculation was
superfluous, and by no means possessed of the importance which certain
other players attached to it, even though they sat with ruled papers in
their hands, whereon they set down the coups, calculated the chances,
reckoned, staked, and--lost exactly as we more simple mortals did who
played without any reckoning at all.

However, I deduced from the scene one conclusion which seemed to me
reliable--namely, that in the flow of fortuitous chances there is, if
not a system, at all events a sort of order. This, of course, is a very
strange thing. For instance, after a dozen middle figures there would
always occur a dozen or so outer ones. Suppose the ball stopped twice
at a dozen outer figures; it would then pass to a dozen of the first
ones, and then, again, to a dozen of the middle ciphers, and fall upon
them three or four times, and then revert to a dozen outers; whence,
after another couple of rounds, the ball would again pass to the first
figures, strike upon them once, and then return thrice to the middle
series--continuing thus for an hour and a half, or two hours. One,
three, two: one, three, two. It was all very curious. Again, for the
whole of a day or a morning the red would alternate with the black, but
almost without any order, and from moment to moment, so that scarcely
two consecutive rounds would end upon either the one or the other. Yet,
next day, or, perhaps, the next evening, the red alone would turn up,
and attain a run of over two score, and continue so for quite a length
of time--say, for a whole day. Of these circumstances the majority were
pointed out to me by Mr. Astley, who stood by the gaming-table the
whole morning, yet never once staked in person.

For myself, I lost all that I had on me, and with great speed. To begin
with, I staked two hundred gulden on "even," and won. Then I staked the
same amount again, and won: and so on some two or three times. At one
moment I must have had in my