66 66 The Jews abound here. Splendid heads have some of them; but some of them look very evil, too; hungry, furtive, and unclean. A German Jew is the pariah of the race, and Homburg is his paradise. Here is one before us, sitting at the corner of this second table with several piles of silver coin and a few gold pieces before him. His face makes one think of Judas and the thirty drachmæ; the woolly hair, grizzling at the temples, peaks down over the low forehead, a ridge of which sustains the straight black eyebrows; the long, glittering tawny brown eyes seem to express a longing to break all the commandments at once; his unwashed fingers wander from the double to the single florins as if the desire to gain two conflicted with the wish to risk but one. Let us be thankful that we owe him no pound of flesh. ner mes chiens. Voilà encore une mal- good motive must exist for his presence adresse que vous me faites faire. Mille in this unhallowed place. He can not pardons, monsieur, je vous supplie!" distinguish who greets him, for his sight Long before the old lady has finished is very dim; look at the ill-tied cravat speaking the Australian has re-made the and rebellious collar, and coat buttoned pile of gold, and with a smile that par- all awry; his gloves, too, are not feltakes as much of pity as good-nature, is lows-one is black, one green. He sees entering the game in his book. "Tout à none of these shortcomings, and who la masse, monsieur ?" inquires the ban- knows him would have a waspish tongue ker, with his finger on the cards. Our indeed, to speak unkindly of them. player nods. Quatre cent Frederics à la rouge-rien ne va plus! Deux, huit, douze, vingt-deux, vingt-huit, trente-sept- That looks like winning for the rouge. "Quatre, douze, dix-sept, dix-neuf, vingt-neuf, trentehuit" No! by the fickle goddess! Noir gagne et couleur!" The Australian does not even cast a look at the rouleaux as they are raked into the bank. Not so the player with the handsome face and troubled look; his knees tremble convulsively beneath the table-he too had staked on la rouge. The first will return to his hotel and eat his filet de bœuf à la maître d'hôtel with appetite that no loss he will incur can impair; the last will lie with the moonlight on his colder face in an avenue of the woods, where the Jäger will find him, pistol in hand. "La Direction" will bury him and pay his hotel bill if need be. They would even, had he asked it, have given him the means to go to the next duchy to destroy himself; but as it has happened here it can not be helped. "Faites vos jeux, messieurs!" The average of suicides enters into the statistics of the gambling establishments. Last year they were rather in excess of others, and rose, it is stated, to twenty-two cases. The game, you see, is no longer Trente et Quarante; there is more noise and bustle. This is the roulette table. The machine comprises a fixed sunken basin, channeled mid-way down with a groove in which the ball runs. The bottom of the basin is separate from the sides, and revolves at the motion imparted by the croupier when he turns the lever fixed in its centre. This portion of the machine is divided into thirty-seven small compartments, alternately red and black, and numbered from zero to thirty-six. Have you seen enough of the game? Let us wander on. There is the English chaplain-unobtrusive and obliging to His lines are cast in unevery one. When the game begins, the croupier pleasant places; frothy-mouthed bigots turns the lever smartly, and thus sends spread phosphorous of zeal on scraps the ball spinning round in the groove in of fustian," and tease his life out. The a direction opposite to that in which the school of men who vex "the House" numbers revolve. Presently the ball, with biennial motions to bring in bills to losing the momentum required to keep reform the Liturgy, would have him en- it in the groove, drops to the lower part ter Mammon's temple as The Great Ex- of the machine, which retains its rotary ample did of old the Jewish one, to over-motion for a longer period. Here it is turn the table of the money-changers, and withdraw their subscriptions from the church-fund because the pastor will not preach a gospel of damnation. Some hustled and jumped about against the divisions separating the figures, until, finally, it lights in the numbered space between some two of them, which de cides the result of the coup. Observe that each half of the table presents, firstly, three columns of twelve figures each, coinciding with those in the basin, but inclosed in squares like those of a chessboard, and so arranged that the sequence runs horizontally across the three columns, not longitudinally down their length. The zero occupies a space by itself at the head of the column; secondly, right and left of the numbers, a lined space divided into three sections; those to the right presenting respectively a red diamond (rouge), then the word pair, further on the word passe, and, in the corresponding sections in the lined space on the opposite side of the table, a green diamond, noir, and the words impair and manque; thirdly, at the end of the table farthest removed from the machine, another lined space a few inches in breadth, subdivided at its right and left extremities into three small squares. Such is the roulette table. The choice of chances is varied. You can play on any one or any quantity of the numbers by placing a stake on each of those you back, and if among your choice there should happen to be the corresponding number to that into which the ball falls, you become entitled to thirty-five times the amount of the stake upon it. Or you may play a single stake upon any two contiguous figures by placing it on the line separating the one from the other. In the event of either coming up you are entitled to sixteen times the amount of your stake. Or upon any four, by covering the point at which two lines cross in the body of the columns, by which means the coin touches the corners of four adjacent squares. Success entitles to eight times the stake. Or upon any sequence of three by placing a coin upon the boundary line in front of the sequence you select. Or sequence of six by allowing the coin to touch the boundary as well as the dividing line between two se. quences. To make the meaning plainer: you see that the numbers 1, 2, 3, form the first series heading their respective columns divided by a horizontal line from 4, 5, 6, which follow in the second rank. To stake on the first sequence it would be necessary to place a coin so that one half of it lay inside the square occupied by the 1 or the 3, and the other half outNEW SERIES-Vol. II., No. 4. side the line defining the space allotted to the numbers. To retain the sequence of six, while half the coin must still be outside the boundary line, the other must cover the point of contact of this last with the line separating 1, 2, 3, from 4, 5, 6. A successful coup on the sequence of three entitles to eight, on the sequence of six to five times the amount staked. The three smaller squares at the end of the table are termed severally the places of "Le premier douze," "Le douze du milieu," and "Le douze dernier." By placing a stake in the first you back the twelve numbers from one to twelve inclusive, the second represents those from thirteen to twenty four, the third, the remaining twelve numbers from twenty-five to thirty-six. Should any one of the numbers in the douze you play upon, win, you become entitled to twice the amount of your stake. You may, if you prefer it, back any one of the longitudinal columns of twelve figures-the result of success is the same. The compartments in the machine being alternately red and black explain the significancy of the red and green diamonds. Pair (even) wins when the number declared is even. Impair (odd) when the reverse is the case. Passe (to pass) is successful when the declared number is included in the last half of the numbers, and has passed the middle number eighteen. Manque (to miss) when it falls short of, or only attains to the middle number. Whenever zero is declared, the bank takes every stake on all the numbers except it; but those on the colors and on pair, impair, passe, and manque are placed in prison, and played for in the same way as when a refait occurs at Trente et Quarante, and with results as little remunerative to the player. Now, watch the game in operation; it sounds a more complex affair than it is. Look at that tall man with the heavy bushy moustache, who has just tossed a gold piece on the numbers, seemingly indifferent as to which it lights on. The croupier bows, and indicating 12 with the end of his rake, inquires by the gesture if that be where the money is to be staked. The player's countenance is not 29 a common one, neither German, English, nor French in type--a bold manly face too--thought, obstinacy, and resolution about it. He does not look a communicative man, nor of those one would ask to pass the salt, or give a light for a cigar. There goes the machine. The keen eyes of banker and croupiers are on every square inch of the table to see that no stake is placed or altered when the ball falls. So! did you not hear it drop? "Rien ne va plus. Trente-deux, rouge, pair, et passe!" Such is the banker's declaration. With a half smile the tall loser of the gold piece turns away, his eyebrows lifting slightly as he encounters the glance of two gentlemen, who standing behind him move aside to let him pass, and follow him at a short distance as he moves towards the doors. His gold piece is tossed in among the rest; tomorrow it will be no longer recognizable. The hand that staked it can do much, but can not make the double Frederick worth more than twenty florins, although it belongs to Alexander, Emperor of All the Russias. Is it Humboldt, in his Cosmos, who says that every separate atom possesses in itself all the natural properties and forces of this agglomeration of atoms on which man sells and buys, marries, and makes his last will and testament? Well, Homburg is no more than an atom. A particle cohering to the totality of the great human system by the central attraction of civilization, exactly as a grain of sand gravitates to the earth's centre. And just as mites betray their existence, with all its fit conditions, upon the grain of sand, so is human society in all its phases, and under all its aspects, visible on the larger atom-Homburg. The evil aspects predominate; but so they would everywhere, if mortal intelligence could take cognizance of the doings and seemings of the whole human family. Homburg is a microcosm; Gulliver could see a vast deal more in Lilliput than he could in Brobdingnag. Turn your eyes upon that group of people pressed one against the other to watch those two Frenchmen who are playing in concert at the roulette table. By the way, one of the players is he who was condemned the other day par contu You mace, as the absolutist tribunals in France call it, to several years' penal servitude for the most flagitious cheating at the Paris clubs. Well, within that group are to be found representatives of most of the classes into which nature, employment, or necessity has forced the flood of humanity to diverge. Can you recognize any of the spectators? No. see that little man, so short that even on tiptoe he can scarcely look over the shoulders of those in front-he with the green ribbon in his button-hole. A beholder can not remember what his face is like, because it is so difficult to get beyond his eyes. What a glance there is in those deep dark optics: how unwinkingly they meet one the windows of his brain whence his thought looks out: he is one of the great clocks of finance; when he strikes the money-mongers set their watches by him. He is great on the Danube--vast at Vienna, and has solved the problem of extracting riches from poyerty-entendu, that of the Austrian exchequer. The man whose broad shoulders intercept his view spends a fortune in advertising a quack medicine; the advertisement sheet of every newspaper in Great Britain undergoes a course of his pills. Near him again, is an oddity; the old, old man in the brown coat with a cape to it. He was at the duchess's ball at Brussels on that memorable summer night in —15. The British treasury has paid him half-pay for fifty years, which he has regularly lost at roulette; he spends his life in compiling systems of play, in the belief that the bank is to be broken by arithmetic. What a lovely face!--that girl's who has just handed a florin to the croupier to stake for her. Where are we to find the blue with which her eyes are painted? So young, so beautiful, so innocent; for crime itself would be found not guilty if detected in such guise. Mercy upon us, what a sham the world is. She is Fräulein, la sylphide des sylphides of the ballet at Berlin, and that gentleman who has just arrested her hand in the act of passing another stake to the croupier is the Herzog von, her protector. The embryo Redpaths and Robsons of society are there too, looking with sickening heart at the rake of the croupier, pitilessly overtaking the gold diverted something akin to gratitude. No sort of pressure is exercised to exact compensation from the amused by attendance at the gambling-tables. Curiosity and covetousness are the allies the Direction counts upon to serve their turn. The balls, sporting, concerts, theatre, races, etc. are the confection, les salons the grain of strychnine it overlays. The imposture practiced under the title Trente et Quarante and Roulette is so patent that the signalizing of a few facts will render it clear to the most careless atttention. It is not here intended to convey the impression that individuals have never risen from the tables with money won; but it must be borne in mind that the money is not won from the bank, but from other individuals who are losers as a necessary corollary to the first individual's being a winner. Every player at either of the games established from its legitimate destination, and feeling the damp shade of the prison creeping over the glittering saloons-the "coming event casting its shadow before." Certainly it was not philanthropy which built the Casino in Homburg. The town itself possesses neither attraction nor interest. The neighborhood is charming, but far less so than the Valley of the Lähn, or the banks of the Neckar, and would not attract or retain the crowd of strangers that resort to it but for the lure of the Casino. Of course it will be advanced by its defenders, that the benefit the town derives from the influx of visitors is at once the motive and justification of the establishment, and that the insignificancy of the town, apart from it, adds cogency to the justification. The objections that suggest themselves to this theory are, the manifest incongruity of subsidizing the sovereign of a state enormously for permission to improve in the Homburg salons, is betting odds on his dominions; the stringent municipal an even event. The establishment of a regulations, prohibiting all participation maximum stake which a player can not of the subjects of the Landgrave in the exceed, precludes the neutralization of the pursuits of the Casino, and the oft-recur- odds zero creates in favor of the bank. ring enactments by which the government Were it possible to double the stake after finds it necessary to exercise pressure on each loss until the fluctuations of the game the Direction, to wring from them their brought round the player's turn for sucunwilling contributions towards the cess, capital would always counterbalance maintenance of the town. zero, but your power of staking being limited, added to the fact that at roulette the chances are thirty-seven to one against every single number on the table, two to one against every douze, and that the apparently even betting on the rouge or noir, pair or impair, passe or manque, is enormously modified against the player by the zero; it becomes evident that to sustain the hypothesis of a possibility of winning at the game is to maintain that abnormal conditions are the rule, and normal the exception. At Trente et Quarante the events betted upon are, in their essence, even, but the re ait gives the bank the certainty of winning without the possibility of loss; for inasmuch as, of the four denominations or chances, two must lose, whenever a refait takes place, the two losing chances pay the bank, while the two that win merely regain their own stakes. Homburg proper benefits but in an infinitesimal degree from the toleration extended to legalized robbery. The hotelkeepers (and Homburg, like Ems in Nassau, and Interlaken in Switzerland, is little more than an assemblage of hotels,) are almost without exception strangers who transfer from the scene of their accumulation the fortunes made there. The "Direction" is foreign in all its elements, and if we except a few Jew moneylenders (by courtesy bankers) who, for the most part, keep branches of other establishments-these are the only communities who profit by the existing state of things. The outward and visible attractions of the Casino are so offered that any mere pleasure-seeker may readily be misled into the belief that Homburg is but a German Cheltenham improved upon by the liberality of its organizers. Gratuitous amusements in a sumptuous edifice create a feeling in favor of the promoters, which, in an uninitiated person, inspires Homburg, then, possesses interesting features of its own: it offers the spectacle of the mine of weakness being sagaciously worked by avarice, and so we *k with the brief 2 xe to lose-bat 1. te to win How I trembled with emotion. So as her wistful face, Tanwarted. All in silence Bought of little Kitty When that night I crossed the sea; He hoped that she was thinking that very time of me. he did prophetic fancy With sweet visions fill my brain, Every word that I would say, Time passed on. I Came to London She was sitting on a platform Very near to Temple Bar, While I watched her from afar; And looked up with glad surprise, I could tell she half repented How it made my pulses beat! After long impatient waiting, The beloved bride appeared, Full of loving sympathy. |