used
graciously to attend the play-table, where luck occasionally declared
itself for and against her Majesty. Her appearance used to create not
a little excitement in the Saloon of Roulette, the game which she
patronised, it being more "fertile of emotions" than the slower
trente-et-quarante. She dreamed of numbers, had favourite incantations
by which to conjure them: noted the figures made by peels of peaches and
so forth, the numbers of houses, on hackney-coaches--was superstitious
comme toutes les rimes poetiques. She commonly brought a beautiful agate
bonbonniere full of gold pieces, when she played. It was wonderful to
see her grimaces: to watch her behaviour: her appeals to heaven, her
delight and despair. Madame la Baronne de la Cruchecassee played on one
side of her, Madame la Comtesse de Schlanigenbad on the other. When she
had lost all her money her Majesty would condescend to borrow--not from
those ladies:--knowing the royal peculiarity, they never had any money;
they always lost; they swiftly pocketed their winnings and never left a
mass on the table, or quitted it, as courtiers will, when they saw luck
was going against their sovereign. The officers of her household were
Count Punter, a Hanoverian, the Cavaliere Spada, Captain Blackball of a
mysterious English regiment, which might be any one of the hundred
and twenty in the Army List, and other noblemen and gentlemen, Greeks,
Russians, and Spaniards. Mr. and Mrs. Jones (of England), who had made
the princess's acquaintance at Bagneres (where her lord still remained
in the gout) and perseveringly followed her all the way to Baden, were
dazzled by the splendour of the company in which they found themselves.
Miss Jones wrote such letters to her dearest friend Miss Thompson,
Cambridge Square, London, as caused that young person to crever with
envy. Bob Jones, who had grown a pair of mustachios since he left home,
began to think slightingly of poor little Fanny Thompson, now he had got
into "the best Continental society." Might not he quarter a countess's
coat on his brougham along with the Jones arms, or, more slap-up still,
have the two shields painted on the panels with the coronet over? "Do
you know the princess calls herself the Queen of Scots, and she calls me
Julian Avenel?" says Jones delighted, to Clive, who wrote me about
the transmogrification of our schoolfellow, an attorney's son, whom I
recollected a snivelling little boy at Grey Friars. "I say, Ne