to self-conceit, for I wanted to astonish
the bystanders with the riskiness of my play. Also, I remember
that--oh, strange sensation!--I suddenly, and without any challenge
from my own presumption, became obsessed with a DESIRE to take risks.
If the spirit has passed through a great many sensations, possibly it
can no longer be sated with them, but grows more excited, and demands
more sensations, and stronger and stronger ones, until at length it
falls exhausted. Certainly, if the rules of the game had permitted even
of my staking fifty thousand florins at a time, I should have staked
them. All of a sudden I heard exclamations arising that the whole thing
was a marvel, since the red was turning up for the fourteenth time!

"Monsieur a gagne cent mille florins," a voice exclaimed beside me.

I awoke to my senses. What? I had won a hundred thousand florins? If
so, what more did I need to win? I grasped the banknotes, stuffed them
into my pockets, raked in the gold without counting it, and started to
leave the Casino. As I passed through the salons people smiled to see
my bulging pockets and unsteady gait, for the weight which I was
carrying must have amounted to half a pood! Several hands I saw
stretched out in my direction, and as I passed I filled them with all
the money that I could grasp in my own. At length two Jews stopped me
near the exit.

"You are a bold young fellow," one said, "but mind you depart early
tomorrow--as early as you can--for if you do not you will lose
everything that you have won."

But I did not heed them. The Avenue was so dark that it was barely
possible to distinguish one's hand before one's face, while the
distance to the hotel was half a verst or so; but I feared neither
pickpockets nor highwaymen. Indeed, never since my boyhood have I done
that. Also, I cannot remember what I thought about on the way. I only
felt a sort of fearful pleasure--the pleasure of success, of conquest,
of power (how can I best express it?). Likewise, before me there
flitted the image of Polina; and I kept remembering, and reminding
myself, that it was to HER I was going, that it was in HER presence I
should soon be standing, that it was SHE to whom I should soon be able
to relate and show everything. Scarcely once did I recall what she had
lately said to me, or the reason why I had left her, or all those
varied sensations which I had been experiencing a bare hour and a half
ago. No, those sensations seemed to