, what happened at first to Baron Siegfried happened to
me. My brain reeled! When a fresh haul of money was handed over to me I
often felt as if I were in a dream, and should be sure to wake up just
as I was pocketing my winnings. When the clock struck two the game came
to an end as usual.

"Just as I was leaving the room, an old officer took me by the
shoulder, and said, transfixing me with a grave, powerful eye:

"'Young man, if you had known what you were about, you would have
broken the banque. But if ever you do know about it, no doubt you will
go to the devil, like all the rest.' He left me, without waiting for my
answer.

"The day was breaking when I got to my room, and emptied the money out
of all my pockets on to the table. Picture to yourselves the feelings
of a mere boy, entirely dependent on his relatives, restricted to a
miserable mite of an allowance of weekly pocket-money, who suddenly, as
if at the wave of a magic wand, finds himself in possession of a sum
which is, at all events, considerable enough to appear, in his eyes, a
fortune! But, as I gazed at the heaps of coin, all my mind was suddenly
filled with an anxiety, a strange, alarmed uneasiness, which put me
into a cold perspiration. The words of the old officer came back to me,
as they had not struck me before, in the most terrible significance. I
felt as though the coin which was blinking at me there on the table was
the earnest money of a bargain whereby I had sold my soul to the powers
of darkness, so that there was no escape more for it possible, and it
was destroyed for evermore. The blossoms of my life seemed to be gnawed
upon by a hidden worm, and I sank into inconsolable despair. The
morning dawn was flaming up behind the eastern hills. I lay down in the
window-seat. I gazed, with the most intense longing, for the rising of
the sun which should drive away the darksome spirits of night; and
when the woods and plains shone forth in his golden glory, it was day
in my soul once more, and there came to me the most inspiriting sense
of a power to resist all temptation, and shield my life from that
demoniacal impulse, which was full of the power of--somehow and
somewhere--impelling it to utter destruction. I made then a most sacred
vow that I would never touch a card again, and that vow I have kept
most strictly. And the first use I made of my money was to part from my
friend, to his immense surprise, and set out on that excursion to
Dresden, P