THE LATE MATTIA PASCAL - 1904
Chapter 6
... CLICK, CLICK, CLICK, CLICK...
Of all the things and people in the
great salon, the ivory ball,
gracefully circling the roulette in
a direction opposite to the whirl of
the quadrant, seemed alone to be at
play: Click, click, click, click....
The ball alone! Surely this could
not be play to the people standing
and sitting there with their eyes
glued upon that ball, tense in the
torment occasioned them by its
caprices. To that same ball, on the
yellow squares of the table just
below, many many hands had brought
votive offerings of gold; and, all
around, many other hands were
nervously fingering more gold--the
gold of the next play; while
suppliant eyes seemed to pursue the
ball in its swift but graceful
gyrations: "Where it be thy
pleasure, little ball of ivory!
Where it be thy pleasure,
delightful, cruel, Divinity of
Chance!"
I had wandered to Monte Carlo by
merest accident--after one of the
usual scenes between me, my
mother-in-law, and my wife. In the
harrowing torture of my recent
bereavement, I had no endurance left
for this life of quarreling, of
bitter nagging, of physical and
moral squalor absolute. One day in
sheer disgust and quite without
premeditation, I went to the old
volume where I had put the money
from Roberto, transferred the five
hundred lire to my pocket, put on my
hat and coat and took to the road.
I started out, on foot, with not a
thought except that of escape from
the hell in which I had been
living. Mechanically, my steps
turned toward a neighboring village
through which the railroad passed.
On the way thither a plan formed
vaguely in my mind. I would go to
Marseilles, and take a steamer
thence to one of the Americas. The
money I had with me should
suffice--for the steerage at least.
Beyond that, I might trust to luck.
What could possibly happen to me
anywhere worse than what I had been
through? Perhaps beyond the horizon
ahead a new slavery awaited me--but
with heavier chains, I asked myself,
than those I had just snapped from
my feet? It would be interesting to
see a bit of the world, at any rate.
And I might even hope to shake off
the deadly oppression that had
settled on my spirit and was
inhibiting all my impulses of
ambition and action. To Marseilles,
then!
But before I got to Nice my courage
failed. Alas! Where was that old
capacity for decision that had been
one of the virtues of my boyhood?
Discouragement must have eaten
deeply into the fibre of my being.
My
will seemed to have decayed, to have
been paralysed, in all my
sufferings. Five hundred lire! Could
I launch out into the unknown on
that miserable guarantee? Had I the
mental training to win a successful
battle for existence in a new and
strange environment?
My train was to make a long stop at
Nice. When I alighted there, I had
virtually decided to go no farther,
though I was not resolved to go back
home. I compromised by wandering
about through the town.
Somewhere on the _Avenue de la Gare_
I stopped in front of a shop with a
large gilded sign: _Dépôt de
Roulettes de Précision_! Wheels of
every description were on show in
the windows, with other accessories
of gaming, among these, a number of
manuals, their paper covers
ornamented with pictures of the
roulette.
It has often been observed that
unhappy people fall ready victims to
superstition; however prone they may
be thereafter to laugh at the
credulity of others and the hopes
which belief in luck aroused
suddenly in themselves (hopes
inevitably deceived, of course!).
Well, I remember that when I had
read the title of one of those
manuals of gambling: "A Sure Method
for Winning at Roulette," I walked
away from the shop window with a
smile of pitying contempt on my
lips. Why was it then, that a few
steps further on, I stopped, turned
around, went back to the shop, and
smiling with the same pitying
contempt for the stupidity of
others, bought a copy of that very
manual?
I could make neither head nor tail
to what it said. I failed to get a
clear idea of what roulette was
like, or even of the exact
construction of the wheel. But I
read on.
"Guess my trouble is with French," I
finally concluded. I had never had
a lesson in that language. Back in
the Library I had looked a grammar
through and worked out a text here
and there. But I had no notion of
French pronunciation, and I had
never uttered a word in the strange
tongue for fear of making people
laugh. This latter preoccupation
left me undecided for some time as
to whether I ought to enter a
gambling house. But then I thought:
"Here you were a moment ago starting
off for the Americas with barely a
cent to your name and without a word
of Spanish or English inside your
head. A man as brave as that ought
to be brave enough to go as far as
the Casino: you know a little
French! Besides you have the
manual...."
Monte Carlo, I further reflected,
was only a short walk from Nice.
"Neither my wife nor my
mother-in-law know about this money
Roberto sent me. I think I'll go and
lose it there. That will take away
all temptation to run away for good.
Perhaps I can manage to save enough
for a ticket home; but even if I
don't...."
I had heard that the Casino had a
beautiful garden with tall--and
strong--trees. In the worst case I
could take my belt and hang myself
to one of these. Dying gratis, and
with dignity, that would be indeed!
"Who knows how much the poor devil
may have lost?" people would say, on
finding me!
To tell the truth, I was
disappointed in the Casino. The
portal, perhaps, was not so bad.
Those eight marble columns really
made you feel that the architect
intended a sort of Temple to the
Goddess Fortune. Here, then, was a
big door, with side entrances, one
to the right and one to the left. My
French helped me over the TIREZ
inscribed on the latter; and by
inference I solved the POUSSEZ on
the one in front of me: if "tirez"
meant "pull," I could risk "push" on
the other.
So I pushed, and I was admitted to
the building.
All in bad taste! And something, I
think, should be done about it!
People, who go to Monte Carlo to
leave good money behind, ought at
least to have the satisfaction of
being skinned in a place somewhat
less pretentious and a whole lot
more beautiful. All wideawake towns
in Europe are putting up the most
attractive slaughterhouses these
days--a courtesy wasted, so far as I
can see, on the poor unschooled
animals that are killed in them. The
fact is, of course, that the great
majority of players at Monte Carlo
have something else on their minds
than the decorations of those five
great halls; just as the idlers
sitting on the sofas all around are
often not in a condition to notice
the questionable taste of the
upholstery.
* * *
Before trying my own luck (with no
great hopes, I may say) I thought it
would be better to look on a while,
and familiarize myself with the
manner of the game. And this was by
no means so complicated as my manual
had led me to suppose. In a few
minutes, indeed, I thought I had
mastered it. I went, accordingly, to
the first table on the left in the
first room.
I laid a few francs on a number that
came into my head: twenty-five. Most
of the people about me followed the
whirling ball with a strained
nervous expectation. I could not
conceal my interest in its flight
entirely; but I smiled nonchalantly,
despite a curious tickling sensation
that seemed to creep around the
inside lining of my chest.
The ball slowed up and finally fell
upon the quadrant.
"_Vingt-cinq_," the croupier called;
"_rouge, impair, et passe_!"
I had won. I was reaching out to
gather up the pile of chips that
were tossed upon my ante, when a
tall strapping fellow who had been
standing behind me pushed my hand
aside and gathered in my money. In
my faltering French I tried to make
him understand that he had made a
mistake--oh, yes, by mistake, not
intentionally, of course! The man
was a German, and spoke French even
more falteringly than I. But he had
a brazen courage to make up for any
deficiencies in his grammar. He came
back at me with vigor, asserting
that the mistake was mine and the
money his. I looked around the table
helplessly. No one breathed a word,
not even a neighbor who had made
some comment when I put my money on
the 25. I looked appealingly at the
croupiers in charge of the table.
They sat there as passive as
statues. "Ah, I see," said I to
myself, gathering up the chips I had
prepared for another bet.
"Here we have a sure method for
winning at roulette! Pity they
forgot to mention it in the manual.
I imagine it's the only sure one, in
the end!"
I went to another table, where the
game was running high, and stood for
some time examining the people
seated around it--gentlemen in
formal dress for the most part, and
several women, more than one of whom
seemed of questionable calling. My
interest fell, in particular, upon a
short light-haired man with big blue
eyes, the balls of which were
streaked with veins of red, while
the lashes were long and almost
white. I did not like the looks of
him at first; he too was in formal
clothes, but such stylish attire did
not seem to be in tone on him
exactly. I thought him worth
watching, however. He laid a heavy
stake and lost. He plunged again
still more heavily. Again he lost.
Not a trace of emotion was visible
on his face. "There!" I reflected
mentally; "he's not the kind of
person to steal the penny or two I
risk!" And a certain shame came over
me, besides, despite my unfortunate
experience at the other table. Here
people were throwing money away by
the fistfuls, and without a shadow
of fear! What a cheap sort I must be
to worry about the few francs in my
pocket! And here, next to this man,
with an empty chair between, sat a
young fellow, his face as pale as
wax, a huge monocle on his left eye.
He was using only green chips, but
he was throwing his money down with
an affectation of bored indifference
and showing no interest in the ball.
Indeed he sat half turned away from
the table, twirling his mustache. At
the end of a play he would ask a
neighbor if he had lost. And he lost
every time.
How the money was flying there!
Gradually the excitement of the game
seized on me as well. I sat down
between the two men and began to
place my chips now on this number
and now on that. My first bets all
went against me; but then suddenly I
began to feel a very strange
sensation creeping over me--a sort
of inspired supernatural
intoxication, that took me out of
myself, making me the automatic
agent of unconscious intuitions from
within. Why this number rather than
any other? "There, that square at
the end--on the right! Yes!" I was
absolutely sure the number was going
to win; and win it did. My bets were
small at first; but soon I was
throwing out my money without
counting it. The longer I played,
the clearer my strange power of
drunken divination seemed to grow,
nor did my confidence wane when I
suffered a loss or two; in fact, I
imagined I had foreseen such breaks
in my luck, and I had even said to
myself more than once: "Yes, this
time I am going to lose--I must
lose!" And now I was quite beside
myself: I had a sudden impulse to
risk everything I had, my original
bet and all that I had won. My guess
came out! It was getting too much
for me: my ears were buzzing and I
began to sweat. One of the
croupiers noticed my persistent good
fortune. I thought I caught a
challenge in the glance he gave me.
Never mind! Let's try again! Again I
pushed everything I had upon the
board. I remember that my hand
stopped on the number 35, the same
number that had won before. That was
a bad chance! I started to change;
but no, a voice within me seemed to
whisper: "Stay where you are!" I
closed my eyes, and I must have
grown as pale as death. A great
silence fell over the table as
though everyone were sharing in my
terrible anxiety. The ball started
round and round. And round and round
it whirled! Would it never stop? Now
it was going a little more slowly,
but that seemed only to exasperate
my torture. Click! It had fallen. I
did not open my eyes. But I knew
what the croupier was going to say
(his voice when it sounded seemed to
come from far far away as from a
distant world):
"_Trente-cinq, noir, impair, et
passe_!"
I raked in the pile of money and
left the table. I had to go! I was
too weak to continue playing; and
when I walked it was with the
stagger of a drunken man. I
collapsed on a divan, at the end of
my endurance, my head sinking on the
back of a chair. Yes! Sleep! I
needed sleep! A little nap would do
me good. And I was almost yielding,
when a sudden sense of heaviness
about me restored my consciousness
with a shock. How much had I won? I
looked up, but I had to close my
eyes again. The great hall of the
Casino seemed to be whirling dizzily
round and round. How hot it was in
there! How stifling! A breath of
air! Yes, a breath of air! What,
dark already? The lights were coming
on! How long had I been playing?
I rose with difficulty to my feet,
and left the room.
* * *
Top
of page
Outside, in the atrium, night had
not yet fallen; and a breath of the
cool bracing air revived me. A
number ef people were about, some of
them walking up and down by
themselves, concerned with their own
thoughts; others in groups of two or
three, chatting, smoking, joking.
They were all objects of interest to
me. I was still a stranger to the
Casino, and conscious of looking the
greenhorn too. I began carefully to
watch such as appeared most at their
ease. But how could one ever tell?
When I should least have expected
such a thing, one of them would
suddenly fall silent, toss his
cigarette aside, and pale, haggard,
distraught, start off toward the
play rooms again, pursued by the
laughter of his companions. "What
was the joke? I could not see; but
instinctively, I would join in the
laugh, looking after the fugitive
with a silly smile on my face.
"_A toi, mon chéri_!" I heard a
harsh female voice whisper behind
me. I turned around. It was one of
the women who had been sitting near
me at the table. She was holding out
a rose toward me, keeping another
for herself. She had just bought
them at the buffet there in the
outer hall. A flash of anger came
over me! So I did look like an easy
mark!
I refused the flower without a "thank
you," and started to walk away. But
she broadened her smile into a frank
laugh, and taking me confidentially
by the arm she began to talk to me
hurriedly and in a half whisper. She
was proposing, so I understood after
a fashion, that we play together, in
view of the luck she had seen me
having. I would choose the numbers
and she would divide earnings fifty
fifty with me. I tore my arm loose,
with a show of anger, and left her
standing there.
Shortly afterward, I wandered back
into the gaming rooms. There I saw
the same woman again, but talking
now with a short dark-compiexioned
fellow with a bushy beard--a
Spaniard, as I judged--whose
appearance I did not like. She had
given him the rose just previously
offered to me. They both winced at
my approach, and I was sure they had
been talking about me. I decided to
keep on my guard. Sauntering off
toward another room, I approached
the first table there, without
however intending to play. Sure
enough! I had not been there long
when the Spaniard put in an
appearance, but without the woman,
taking up a position near me, though
pretending not to be aware of my
presence. I turned and fixed my eyes
frankly upon him, to let him blow
that I had noticed his attentions
and was not to be trifled with. And
yet, as I now began to think, he
might not be the swindler I was
taking him for! He laid three heavy
bets in succession, and lost all
three, winking his eyelids furiously
at each defeat, perhaps in an effort
to conceal the shock of
disappointment. After the third
throw, he looked up at me and
smiled. I left him there and went
back into the other room to the
table where I had made my heavy
winnings.
The croupiers had changed. The woman
was again in the seat where I had
observed her first. I kept off some
distance from the table so that she
would not see me. Her bets were all
small, and she did not play every
round. I stepped forward to the
table. She was about to lay down a
chip; but when she noticed me, she
withheld her money with the
intention, evidently, of putting it
on the number I should choose. But I
did not play. 'As the croupier
called "_Le jeu est fait! Rien ne va
plus_!" I looked at her: she was
shaking a finger at me with a smile
of reproach. I kept out of the game
for some time; but gradually the
spell caught me again. The
animation about the table was too
pervasive. Besides I seemed to feel
my strange inspiration coming over
me again. I sat down in the first
chair that became empty, forgot all
about the woman, and began to play.
What was the source of that
mysterious foresight I had for
choosing the right number and color
unfailingly? Was it just luck--the
wildest craziest luck man ever had?
Was it a sort of miraculous
divination beyond the control of my
consciousness? How explain, at any
rate, certain obstinate obsessions
of mine, the very absurdity of which
now makes my hair stand on end, as I
reflect that I was risking
everything, perhaps even my life, on
some of those bets that were just
mad impudent challenges to Fortune?
However you may account for it, I
know how I felt: I felt the presence
of a devilish power within me,
which, at that particular time, made
Fortune my captive, rendered her
obedient to my every gesture and
bent her caprice to my will. I felt
this, I say; but I was not the only
one to feel it. Others about the
table soon acquired the same
conviction; and shortly everybody
was betting on the numbers that I
kept choosing for risks of the most
hazardous kind. Why was it I stuck
to red for turn after turn--and why
did red always come out? And why was
it I would switch to zero, just as
zero was about to fall? Even the
young man with the monocle began at
last to take a direct interest in
the game; and a fat man beside him
to pant louder than ever. A fever of
excitement ran about our
table--shivers of impatience,
moments of nervous gasping suspense,
bursts of anxious expectancy that
attained climaxes of veritable fury.
Eventually the croupiers themselves
lost their stiff, impassive,
well-mannered indifference.
Suddenly, after pushing a pile of
chips forward on the table, I felt
myself give way. A sense of
tremendous responsibility came over
me. I had eaten practically nothing
since morning; and all the emotions
of that violent evening had
exhausted my strength. My head began
to swim, and I could not go on. I
won the bet, but I drew back from
the table.
And now I felt a strong grip fasten
itself upon my arm. It was that
short, squatty, bushy-faced
Spaniard, beside himself with
excitement, and determined, at all
costs, to make me continue playing.
"Look," he said. "Eleven and
fifteen. We come to last three
rounds. Play! We break bank!"
He had decided I was an Italian and
was addressing me in my own
language, but with a Spanish brogue
that, done for as I was, made me
laugh. I had just enough strength
left to persist mechanically,
obstinately, in a refusal: "No, no!
I've had enough! I've had enough!
Let me go, sir! Let me go, sir!"
He let me go; but he followed me,
even boarding my train to accompany
me back to Nice. He insisted that I
take a midnight meal with him, and
engage a room in the hotel where he
was living. At first I was not loath
to accept the almost awe-struck
admiration which this fellow had for
me as for a master of divination. I
have noticed that human vanity is
inclined to sniff with pleasure even
the acrid and stupefying incense
that rises from the most petty and
miserable of censers. My own case
was that of a general who by sheer
luck, quite beyond any provision or
plan of his own, has stumbled on a
decisive victory. And this
reflection began actually to take
form in my own mind, as, little by
little, I came out of my
bewilderment, recovered a part of my
strength, and grew conscious of the
annoyance this man's company was
really giving me.
However, though I bade him
good-night in the station at Nice,
he would have none of it. He took me
off to supper with him by main
force. And then it was that he
confessed to having sent the woman
to me in the lobby of the Casino.
She was one of the habitual idlers
about the place; and for three days
he had been providing her with funds
for "a start in life"--giving her,
that is, a hundred francs every now
and then, on the chance that
eventually she might make a real
killing. Following my numbers that
evening, she must have won something
at last; for ihe was not waiting for
the Spaniard in the lobby:
"What I can do?" said he resignedly.
"She probably find a better looking
man. I too old! _Quiza_, I thank
God, segnore, He send her away so
soon!"
My importunate friend had been at
Nice for a week or more; and every
morning he had gone to the Casino.
Up to that evening, he had done
nothing but lose. What he wanted now
was the secret of my success: either
I must have learned the game to the
bottom or have devised an unfailing
system. This made me laugh; and I
assured him I had never seen a
roulette wheel before that morning,
and that I was as surprised as any
one else at my unheard-of good luck.
But he was not convinced. He
decided, I imagine, that he was
dealing with a sharper of no
ordinary merits; for he returned to
the attack after a skillful detour;
and in his curiously fluent
gibberish, half Spanish, half God
knows what, eventually came out with
the proposal he had tried to make to
me that evening through the girl.
"But, my dear sir," I answered, half
amused and half angered by his
insistence, and the assumptions it
implied. "I have no system: how can
there he any science to a game like
that? I had luck, that's all.
Tomorrow I may lose everything. On
the other hand I may win again--as I
hope I shall!"
"But why you not provech today of
your good fortune?"
"Provech?"
"Yes, provech, profit, how you say?"
"Why, I did, considering the few
francs I started with!"
"Good! I pay for you. You, luck, I,
money?"
"But I might lose it all for you!
Look here, sefior: if you are so
sure I'm going to win, you do
tomorrow just as you did today: put
your money on my numbers; then if I
lose, you can't blame me; and if I
win..."
He did not let me finish:
"Eh no, _segnore_; no; today, yes, I
do this. But tomorrow, no, I do not!
You bet _conmigo_ strong? Good! I
play! If no, I no play _seguramente.
Muchas gracias_!"
I looked at the man, trying to
fathom the meaning of all this
chatter. The one thing certain was
that he suspected me of some trick
or other. I flushed and demanded an
explanation. He suppressed the
shrewd smile that had been playing
about his lips, although the leer in
it continued to dominate his
expression:
"I say no--I no play. _No digo
altro_!"
I brought my fist down solidly on
the table in front of me.
"No, you don't get out of this that
way!" I answered angrily--"What's
the meaning of what you said, and of
that fool smile of yours? I don't
see anything to laugh at!"
He grew pale, as I raised my voice,
and seemed to cringe before me. I
felt sure an apology was coming.
However, I shrugged my shoulders and
rose from the table:
"Anyhow, I don't care what you
meant! But I want nothing more to do
with you!"
I paid my bill and left the
restaurant.
* * *
I once knew a man who, from his
extraordinary endowments of
intellect, was worthy of the most
venerating admiration. He never
received any whit of it, however,
and all on account of a pair of
checkered trousers (gray and black
if I remember rightly and fitting
too tight to his legs) which he
would wear, come what may. Our
clothes have something, it may be
about their cut, it may be about
their color, which gives people the
strangest impressions of us.
Take my present case. I thought I
had a right to be put out. I was not
in a dinner coat, of course; but I
was quite decently dressed in a
black suit in keeping with my state
of mourning. Well, from the very
same outfit that miserable German
thought I was enough of an idiot to
risk his stealing my pot; while now
this Spaniard took me for a rascal
so deeply dyed in the wool that he
was afraid of me! "Must be these
whiskers," I concluded as I hurried
along, "or the way my hair is cut. I
am clipped pretty close. On the
other hand, my beard is a bit too
scraggly!" Meanwhile I was anxious
to get to a hotel to see how much I
had really won. It. was two o'clock
by this time and the streets were
deserted. Eventually, a cab came
rattling by. I hailed it, and got
in.
I was a walking cash-box; I had
money in the pockets of my coat, in
the pockets of my vest, in the
pockets of my trousers,
everywhere--gold, silver, paper. The
total must have been an enormous
one. As soon as I reached a room, I
spread my earnings out on the bed.
Eleven thousand lire! I had not seen
any money for such a long time that
I thought it was a fortune that had
thus come to me almost without
effort on my part. But then my mind
reverted to the good old days of the
prosperity of my family, and a
bitter sense of my degradation came
over me. Indeed! Two years there in
that library--. along with my other
misfortunes--had so crushed me that
a paltry two thousand dollars could
look like wealth?
My old feeling of discouragement
returned.
"Here, you tame spineless virtuous
librarian," I apostrophized, looking
at all my gold contemptuously. "Run
along home and pass this over to the
widow Pesca-tore. She will be sure
you stole it; and your stock will go
up in her esteem on that account. Or
rather, sail on to America as you
had planned, if this windfall does
not seem a fitting reward for your
courageous efforts hitherto. You
could, now, you see; you have two
thousand dollars to bank on! What a
millionaire!"
I swept the money together, tossed
it into a drawer of my dresser, and
went to bed. But I could not get to
sleep. What was I really to do? Go
back to Monte Carlo and lose the
money I had made? Or should I rest
content with this one stroke of
fortune, lay it aside somewhere, and
enjoy it modestly as occasion
offered?Enjoy it! A pretty thought
for a man stuck with a family like
mine! Well, I might buy my wife some
better clothes. Romilda seemed not
only to have grown indifferent as to
whether I liked her or not, but even
to take particular pains to prove
odious to me--never fixing her hair,
going around in ugly mules all day
long, and wearing an old wrapper
that left her not a single charm of
figure. Did she feel that it wasn't
worth the trouble to dress decently
for a husband like me? For that
matter, she had never quite
recovered from her long illness; and
she was growing more irritable and
despondent from day to day--not
toward me alone, but toward
everybody. Slovenliness, laziness,
were the natural result of her many
disappointments and the lack of any
real affection on her part for me.
She had taken no interest in our one
little girl who had survived;
because that child was a defeat for
her as compared with the fine boy
that had come to Oliva barely a
month later--and with none of the
trials and torments that had fallen
to Romilda's lot. All these
things--and that friction, besides,
which develops inevitably when
poverty, like a black cat of
ill-omen, huddles in the ashes of a
joyless hearth--had made married
life unbearable to both of us. Would
eleven thousand lire cure all that?
Would eleven thousand lire resurrect
a love that had been traitorously
slain in its early days by the widow
Peseatore? Nonsense! To America
then! But why America? Why go
seeking Fortune so far away, if, as
it seemed, that very Fortune had
halted me, almost by violence, in
front of a gambling store in Nice?
No! I must show some appreciation
for such a courtesy--play the game.
Everything or nothing! After all,
ruin would leave me only where I was
before. Eleven thousand lire! What
was that?
So, the next day, I went back to
Monte Carlo, as indeed I did for
twelve successive days. In all that
time, I had neither leisure nor
opportunity to wonder at the amazing
fortune that attended me, so
completely was I absorbed in the
game--even to the point of utter
madness. And I have not wondered
much since, in view of the turn my
luck finally took after favoring me
so absurdly. In nine days of
reckless playing I amassed a sum of
money that must truly have been
prodigious. On the tenth, I began
to lose, and my ruin was just as
phenomenal. My intuition came to
fail me, as though there were not
sufficient energy left in my nerves
to sustain it. I was not shrewd
enough--or rather, I lacked the
physical strength--to stop in time.
I did stop, as a matter of fact; but
not of my own accord. My salvation
came from one of those horrible
spectacles that are not infrequent,
they say, at Monte Carlo.
I was entering the Casino on the
morning of the twelfth day, when a
gentleman I had often met about the
tables came up to me in great alarm
and announced more by his excited
gestures than by actual words that a
man had just killed himself outside
in the gardens. Somehow I felt sure
it was my Spaniard, and a twinge of
remorse ran through me. After our
talk at supper that first evening,
he had refused to follow my game,
and had lost consistently. Then
seeing me continue my lucky play, he
had finally begun to imitate me. But
by this time, my own good fortune
was coming to an end, and I had
taken to going about from one table
to another. In this way I had lost
sight of him, and he had lost
interest in me.
As I hurried to join the crowd that
had gathered about the body, I tried
to imagine how he would look
stretched out there on the ground,
dead. However, I found, not him, but
the young man with the monocle who
had affected such indifference to
the great sums he was losing that he
always sat with his back to the
wheel. He was lying in such a
natural posture that it seemed he
must have taken that position before
firing the fatal shot. One arm was
eased along his body; the other was
raised to one side, the hand closed
and the forefinger bent as for the
clutch of the revolver. The weapon
was lying a few inches away, and a
little beyond, the boy's hat. His
face was covered with blood, which
had clotted thick in the socket of
one of his eyes. Still more blood
had flowed out from his right temple
upon the sand of the driveway.
Horseflies were already buzzing
about; and one of them alighted on
his face. None of the spectators
seemed inclined to interfere.
Finally I stepped forward, drew a
handkerchief from my pocket and
spread it over the poor fellow's
head. The crowd was irritated
rather than not at this decent act
of mine: I had spoiled the spectacle
if anything!
Then I took to my heels and ran. I
ran to the station, boarded the
first train for Nice, gathered up my
belongings, and started for home
again.
I counted the remnants of my
winnings. I still had eighty-two
thousand lire left.
Could I ever have dreamed that
before evening of that day something
similar to the fate of this young
man was to come to me?
Top of page
