learned to dance easily by the
practice of a thousand casinos.

Above the Babel tongues and the clang of the music, as you listen in the
great saloon, you hear from a neighboring room a certain sharp
ringing clatter, and a hard clear voice cries out, "Zero rouge," or
"Trente-cinq noir. Impair et passe." And then there is a pause of a
couple of minutes, and then the voice says, "Faites le jeu, Messieurs.
Le jeu est fait, rien ne va plus"--and the sharp ringing clatter
recommences. You know what that room is? That is Hades. That is where
the spirited proprietor of the establishment takes his toll, and thither
the people go who pay the money which supports the spirited proprietor
of this fine palace and gardens. Let us enter Hades, and see what is
going on there.

Hades is not an unpleasant place. Most of the people look rather
cheerful. You don't see any frantic gamblers gnashing their teeth or
dashing down their last stakes. The winners have the most anxious faces;
or the poor shabby fellows who have got systems, and are pricking down
the alternations of red and black on cards, and don't seem to be playing
at all. On fete days the country people come in, men and women, to
gamble; and THEY seem to be excited as they put down their hard-earned
florins with trembling rough hands, and watch the turn of the wheel. But
what you call the good company is very quiet and easy. A man loses his
mass of gold, and gets up and walks off, without any particular mark of
despair. The only gentleman whom I saw at Noirbourg who seemed really
affected was a certain Count de Mustacheff, a Russian of enormous
wealth, who clenched his fists, beat his breast, cursed his stars, and
absolutely cried with grief: not for losing money, but for neglecting to
win and play upon a coup de vingt, a series in which the red was turned
up twenty times running: which series, had he but played, it is
clear that he might have broken M. Lenoir's bank, and shut up the
gambling-house, and doubled his own fortune--when he would have been no
happier, and all the balls and music, all the newspaper-rooms and parks,
all the feasting and pleasure of this delightful Rougetnoirbourg would
have been at an end.

For though he is a wicked gambling prince, Lenoir, he is beloved in
all these regions; his establishment gives life to the town, to the
lodging-house and hotel-keepers, to the milliners and hackney-coachmen,
to the letters of horse-flesh, to the huntsmen and gar