loans, and trades on State secrets, what is he but a gamester? The
merchant who deals in teas and tallow, is he any better? His bales of
dirty indigo are his dice, his cards come up every year instead of every
ten minutes, and the sea is his green table. You call the profession of
the law an honourable one, where a man will lie for any bidder; lie down
poverty for the sake of a fee from wealth, lie down right because wrong
is in his brief. You call a doctor an honourable man, a swindling quack,
who does not believe in the nostrums which he prescribes, and takes your
guinea for whispering in your ear that it is a fine morning; and
yet, forsooth, a gallant man who sits him down before the baize and
challenges all comers, his money against theirs, his fortune against
theirs, is proscribed by your modern moral world. It is a conspiracy
of the middle classes against gentlemen: it is only the shopkeeper cant
which is to go down nowadays. I say that play was an institution of
chivalry: it has been wrecked, along with other privileges of men of
birth. When Seingalt engaged a man for six-and-thirty hours without
leaving the table, do you think he showed no courage? How have we had
the best blood, and the brightest eyes, too, of Europe throbbing round
the table, as I and my uncle have held the cards and the bank against
some terrible player, who was matching some thousands out of his
millions against our all which was there on the baize! when we engaged
that daring Alexis Kossloffsky, and won seven thousand louis in a single
coup, had we lost, we should have been beggars the next day; when HE
lost, he was only a village and a few hundred serfs in pawn the worse.
When, at Toeplitz, the Duke of Courland brought fourteen lacqueys, each
with four bags of florins, and challenged our bank to play against
the sealed bags, what did we ask? 'Sir,' said we, 'we have but eighty
thousand florins in bank, or two hundred thousand at three months. If
your Highness's bags do not contain more than eighty thousand, we will
meet you.' And we did, and after eleven hours' play, in which our
bank was at one time reduced to two hundred and three ducats, we won
seventeen thousand florins of him. Is THIS not something like boldness?
does THIS profession not require skill, and perseverance, and bravery?
Four crowned heads looked on at the game, and an Imperial princess, when
I turned up the ace of hearts and made Paroli, burst into tears. No
man on the Euro