by all who know him; everybody
wishes that vengeance may overtake him for all the evil that he has
done, and that it may put an end to his career of iniquity. He has
never played before, at least since he has been in Paris; and so from
all this you need not wonder at our being so greatly astounded when the
old skin-flint appeared at your table. And for the same reasons we
were, of course, pleased at the old fellow's serious losses, for it
would have been hard, very hard, if the old rascal had been favoured by
Fortune. It is only too certain. Chevalier, that the old fool has been
deluded by the riches of your bank. He came intending to pluck you and
has lost his own feathers. But yet it completely puzzles me how Vertua
could act thus in a way so opposite to the true character of a miser,
and could bring himself to play so high. Ah! well--you'll see he will
not come again; we are now quit of him.'

"But this opinion proved to be far from correct, for on the very next
night Vertua presented himself at the Chevalier's bank again, and
staked and lost much more heavily than on the night preceding. But he
preserved a calm demeanour through it all; he even smiled at times with
a sort of bitter irony, as though foreseeing how soon things would be
totally changed. But during each of the succeeding nights the old man's
losses increased like a glacier at a greater and greater rate, till at
last it was calculated that he had paid over thirty thousand _Louis
d'or_ to the bank. Finally he entered the hall one evening, long after
play had begun, with a deathly pale face and troubled looks, and took
up his post at some distance from the table, his eyes riveted in a set
stare upon the cards which the Chevalier successively drew. At last,
just as the Chevalier had shuffled the cards, had had them cut and was
about to begin the _taille_, the old man cried in such a harsh grating
voice, 'Stop!' that everybody looked round well-nigh dismayed. Then,
forcing his way to the table close up to the Chevalier, he said in his
ear, speaking in a hoarse voice, 'Chevalier, my house in the Rue St.
Honore, together with all the furniture and all the gold and silver and
all the jewels I possess, are valued at eighty thousand francs, will
you accept the stake?' 'Very good,' replied the Chevalier coldly,
without looking round at the old man; and he began the _taille_.

"'The queen,' said Vertua; and at the next draw the queen had lost. The
old man reeled b