for
compassion that a desperate gamester will often give the bystanders. How
much can happen in a second's space; how many things depend on a throw
of the die!

"That was his last cartridge, of course," said the croupier, smiling
after a moment's silence, during which he picked up the coin between his
finger and thumb and held it up.

"He is a cracked brain that will go and drown himself," said a
frequenter of the place. He looked round about at the other players, who
all knew each other.

"Bah!" said a waiter, as he took a pinch of snuff.

"If we had but followed _his_ example," said an old gamester to the
others, as he pointed out the Italian.

Everybody looked at the lucky player, whose hands shook as he counted
his bank-notes.

"A voice seemed to whisper to me," he said. "The luck is sure to go
against that young man's despair."

"He is a new hand," said the banker, "or he would have divided his money
into three parts to give himself more chance."

The young man went out without asking for his hat; but the old
watch-dog, who had noted its shabby condition, returned it to him
without a word. The gambler mechanically gave up the tally, and went
downstairs whistling _Di tanti Palpiti_ so feebly, that he himself
scarcely heard the delicious notes.

He found himself immediately under the arcades of the Palais-Royal,
reached the Rue Saint Honore, took the direction of the Tuileries, and
crossed the gardens with an undecided step. He walked as if he were in
some desert, elbowed by men whom he did not see, hearing through all the
voices of the crowd one voice alone--the voice of Death. He was lost in
the thoughts that benumbed him at last, like the criminals who used
to be taken in carts from the Palais de Justice to the Place de Greve,
where the scaffold awaited them reddened with all the blood spilt here
since 1793.

There is something great and terrible about suicide. Most people's
downfalls are not dangerous; they are like children who have not far to
fall, and cannot injure themselves; but when a great nature is dashed
down, he is bound to fall from a height. He must have been raised almost
to the skies; he has caught glimpses of some heaven beyond his reach.
Vehement must the storms be which compel a soul to seek for peace from
the trigger of a pistol.

How much young power starves and pines away in a garret for want of a
friend, for lack of a woman's consolation, in the midst of millions of
fellow-cr