, and other apartments. There
are also rooms for gambling, which is the staple amusement, not only
for the blacklegs and swindlers, who resort to the establishment, but
for the nobility and gentry. The _Conversationshaus_ is rented by the
government to a company, who pay fifty-five thousand dollars a year for
the monopoly of the gaming tables, and pledge themselves to spend one
hundred thousand dollars annually upon the walks and buildings. Of
course players must lose vast sums of money to enable the keepers of
the establishment to pay these large prices. All classes of people
gamble, and about one fourth of those who engage in the seductive play
are ladies--or rather women, though they include not a few of the
nobility.

Balls, concerts, promenades, and the theatre, as well as the exciting
amusement of the gaming tables, keep the visitors well employed during
the season; and when they weary of the din of gayety, a walk of five
minutes will lead them to the solitudes of the forests and the
mountains. There is a library and reading-room in operation, in the
midst of the scene of the revelry. The students spent the afternoon in
wandering through these brilliant halls; and some of them observed,
with a feeling akin to terror, the operations of rouge-et-noir and
roulette. No one spoke at the tables, and no one but players were
allowed to be seated. If any of the boys, after the exciting sport had
become familiar to them, were tempted to try their hand, they had not
money enough to make it an object, which proved the wisdom of the
principal's policy in managing their finances for them.

The next forenoon was devoted to a visit to the two castles above the
town. Only the ancient one has any special interest, and this is noted
for the curious dungeons in the rock beneath it. The castellan, or
keeper, conducted the party down a winding staircase, to an ancient
Roman bath, by a passage made in modern times; for originally the only
access to the dungeons was by a perpendicular shaft in the centre of
the castle, which is still in existence. Tradition declares that the
prisoners, blindfolded, and lashed to an armchair, were lowered through
this shaft to the gloomy vaults hewn out of the solid rock. The dark
and mysterious dungeons were closed by a stone slab, revolving on a
pivot, and weighing from half a ton to a ton. One room, larger than the
others, was the rack-chamber, which contained the instrument of
torture; and in the wa