sketch will help to make the text intelligible for the
most part without going into minor technicalities of the game.]

[Footnote 2: The words "win," "lose," with which the banker places the
two cards on the table, the first to his right for himself, the second
on his left for the punter.]

[Footnote 3: The new _Louis d'or_ were worth somewhat less than the old
coins of the time of Louis XIV. and Louis XV. (See note, p. 175.)]

[Footnote 4: The banker's assistants, who shuffle cards for him, change
cheques, notes, and make themselves generally useful.]

[Footnote 5: Malmaison is a chateau and park situated about six miles
W. of Paris. It once belonged to Richelieu; and there the Empress
Josephine lived, and there she died on the 13th May, 1814.]

[Footnote 6: "_Va bout_" or "_Va banque_" meant a challenge to the bank
to the full amount of the highest limit of play, and if the punter won
he virtually broke the bank.]

[Footnote 7: The first silver ducat is believed to have been struck in
1140 by Roger II., Norman king of Sicily; and ducats have been struck
constantly since the twelfth century, especially at Venice (see _Merchant
of Venice_). They have varied considerably both in weight and fineness, and
consequently in value, at different times and places. Ducats have been
struck in both gold and silver. The early Venetian silver ducat was worth
about five shillings. The name is said, according to one account, to have
been derived from the last word of the Latin legend found on the earliest
Venetian gold coins:--_Sit tibi, Christe, datus, quem tu regis, ducatus_
(duchy); according to another account it is taken from "_il ducato_," the
name generally applied to the duchy of Apulia. (Note, page 98, Vol. I.)]

_MASTER JOHANNES WACHT._[1]

At the time when people in the beautiful and pleasant town of Bamberg
lived, according to the well-known saying, well, _i.e._, under the
crook, namely in the end of the previous century, there was also one
inhabitant, a man belonging to the burgher class, who might be called
in every respect both singular and eminent His name was Johannes Wacht,
and his trade was that of a carpenter.

Nature, in weighing and definitely determining her children's
destinies, pursues her own dark inscrutable path; and all that is
claimed by convenience, and by the opinions and considerations which
prevail in man's narrow existence, as determining factors in settling