Project Gutenberg's The Queen Of Spades, by Alexander Sergeievitch Poushkin

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Title: The Queen Of Spades
1901

Author: Alexander Sergeievitch Poushkin

Translator: H. Twitchell

Release Date: October 17, 2007 [EBook #23058]

Language: English

Character set encoding: ASCII

*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE QUEEN OF SPADES ***

Produced by David Widger

THE QUEEN OF SPADES

By Alexander Sergeievitch Poushkin

Translated by H. Twitchell

Copyright, 1901, by The Current Literature Publishing Company

AT the house of Naroumov, a cavalry officer, the long winter night had
been passed in gambling. At five in the morning breakfast was served
to the weary players. The winners ate with relish; the losers, on the
contrary, pushed back their plates and sat brooding gloomily. Under
the influence of the good wine, however, the conversation then became
general.

"Well, Sourine?" said the host inquiringly.

"Oh, I lost as usual. My luck is abominable. No matter how cool I keep,
I never win."

"How is it, Herman, that you never touch a card?" remarked one of the
men, addressing a young officer of the Engineering Corps. "Here you are
with the rest of us at five o'clock in the morning, and you have neither
played nor bet all night."

"Play interests me greatly," replied the person addressed, "but I hardly
care to sacrifice the necessaries of life for uncertain superfluities."

"Herman is a German, therefore economical; that explains it," said
Tomsky. "But the person I can't quite understand is my grandmother, the
Countess Anna Fedorovna."

"Why?" inquired a chorus of voices.

"I can't understand why my grandmother never gambles."

"I don't see anything very striking in the fact that a woman of eighty
refuses to gamble," objected Naroumov.

"Have you never heard her story?"

"No--"

"Well, then, listen to it. To begin with, sixty years ago my grandmother
went to Paris, where she was all the fashion. People crowded each other
in the streets to get a chance to see the 'Muscovite Venus,' as she was
called. All the great ladies played faro, then. On one occasion, while
playing with the Duke of Orleans, she lost an enormous sum.