at this time easy to lose one's identity
in Wiesbaden, for the town then was, along with Baden-Baden, the Monte
Carlo of the Continent, and adventurers, men and women, from all over
Europe flocked there in thousands to chance their fortune in the
gambling halls. Although a little in advance of this portion of my
history, I will here relate an adventure of mine there, some years after
the period of which I am speaking.

I will, however, preface my narrative with a brief account of the
history of the place. The city of Wiesbaden, previous to the
Franco-German war of 1870, was the chief town of one of those petty
principalities which were plentifully sprinkled over the face of Europe.
Since the old Roman days the town had been famous for its hot springs,
and consequently for its hot baths, and a good many people--during the
Winter particularly--resorted there to bathe and to drink the waters. As
a matter of course, the townspeople, as the custom of such places is,
have recorded many a marvelous cure, ranging all the way from headache
to hydrophobia. But still the town was of little importance save
locally. The petty ruler, with a title longer than his income, lived in
the pretentious castle, beguiling the time by smoking cheap cigars or
ordering on banquets whose piece de resistance consisted of Gebratene
Gans und Kartoffeln, the unlucky bird being tribute in kind from the
farmyard of some peasant subject living in a miserable hut on black
bread.

But a change was impending. A mighty wizard had visited the place, with
an eye quick to see the possibilities of the situation, with a brain to
plan and a hand to execute. His name was Francois Blanc, the head of the
great gambling establishment at Homburg. Vast as were his ambition and
achievements, he was a man of the simplest tastes.

To see him--as I often have--in his seedy coat, his old-fashioned
spectacles on the tip of his nose, one would have taken him for a
country advocate whose wildest dreams were of a practice of two thousand
thalers a year, with an old gig and wheezy mare to haul him around the
country side from client to client. Before his Wiesbaden days he had
been the guiding spirit in the direction of the splendid gambling halls,
the Casino at Homburg. Blanc was impervious to flattery; a hard-headed,
silent man, a man without enthusiasm and without weaknesses, who kept a
lavish table and ate sparingly himself, who had a wine cellar rivaling
that of the Autoc