Clive was not longing to be at the green table: but his companion was
never easy at it or away from it. Next to winning, losing, M. de Florac
said, was the best sport--next to losing, looking on. So he and Clive
went down to the Redoute, where Lord Kew was playing with a crowd
of awestruck amateurs and breathless punters admiring his valour and
fortune; and Clive, saying that he knew nothing about the game, took out
five Napoleons from his purse, and besought Florac to invest them in the
most profitable manner at roulette. The other made some faint attempts
at a scruple: but the money was speedily laid on the table, where it
increased and multiplied amazingly too; so that in a quarter of an hour
Florac brought quite a handful of gold pieces to his principal. Then
Clive, I dare say blushing as he made the proposal, offered half the
handful of Napoleons to M. de Florac, to be repaid when he thought fit.
And fortune must have been very favourable to the husband of Miss Higg
that night; for in the course of an hour he insisted on paying back
Clive's loan; and two days afterwards appeared with his shirt-studs (of
course with his shirts also), released from captivity, his watch, rings,
and chains, on the parade; and was observed to wear his celebrated fur
pelisse as he drove back in a britzska from Strasbourg. "As for myself,"
wrote Clive, "I put back into my purse the five Napoleons with which I
had begun; and laid down the whole mass of winnings on the table, where
it was doubled and then quadrupled, and then swept up by the croupiers,
greatly to my ease of mind. And then Lord Kew asked me to supper and we
had a merry night."

This was Mr. Clive's first and last appearance as a gambler. J. J.
looked very grave when he heard of these transactions. Clive's French
friend did not please his English companion at all, nor the friends of
Clive's French friend, the Russians, the Spaniards, the Italians, of
sounding titles and glittering decorations, and the ladies who belonged
to their society. He saw by chance Ethel, escorted by her cousin Lord
Kew, passing through a crowd of this company one day. There was not one
woman there who was not the heroine of some discreditable story. It was
the Comtesse Calypso who had been jilted by the Duc Ulysse. It was the
Marquise Ariane to whom the Prince Thesee had behaved so shamefully, and
who had taken to Bacchus as a consolation. It was Madame Medee, who had
absolutely killed her old father b