Bohemian Days | Page 2

Apollo at the opera and the masque. His credit was good for fifty thousand francs any day in the year. He had travelled in far and contiguous regions, conducted intrigues at Athens and Damascus, and smoked his pipe upon the Nile and among the ruins of Sebastopol. Without principle, he was yet amiable, and with his dashing style and address, one forgot his worthlessness.
How keenly he is reminded of it now! He cannot work, he has no craft nor profession; he knew enough to pass for an educated gentleman; not enough to earn a franc a day. He is the prot��g�� at present of his washerwoman, and can say, with some governments, that his debts are impartially distributed. He has only two fears--those of starvation in France, and a soldier's death in America.
The prospect of a debtor's prison at Clichy has long since ceased to be a terror. There, he would be secure of sustenance and shelter, and of these, at liberty, he is doubtful every day.
Still, with his threadbare coat, he haunts the Casino and the Valentino of evenings; for some mistresses of a former day send him billets.
He lies in bed till long after noon, that he may not have pangs of hunger; and has yet credit for a dinner at an obscure cremery. When this last confidence shall have been forfeited, what must result to Pisgah?
He is striving to anticipate the answer with this experiment at roulette; for he has a "system" whereby it is possible to break any gambling bank--Spa, Baden, Wisbaden or Homburg. The others have systems also, from Auburn Risque to Simp, the only son of the richest widow in Louisiana, who disbursed of old in Paris ten thousand dollars annually.
His house at Passy was a palace in miniature, and his favorite a tragedy queen. She played at the Folies Dramatiques, and drove three horses of afternoons upon the Champs Elys��es. She had other engagements, of course, when Mr. Lincoln's "paper blockade" stopped Master Simp's remittances, and he passed her yesterday upon the Rue Rivoli, with the Russian ambassador's footman at her back, but she only touched him with her silks.
Simp studied a profession, and was a volunteer counsel in the memorable case of Jeems Pinckney against Jeems Rutledge. His speech, on that occasion, occupied in delivery just three minutes, and set the court-room in a roar. He paid the village editor ten dollars to compose it, and the same sum to publish it.
"If you could learn it for me," said Simp, anxiously, "I would give you twenty dollars."
This, his first and last public appearance, was conditional to the receipt from his mother, of six thousand acres of land and eighty negroes. It might have been a close calculation for a mathematician to know how many black sweat-drops, how many strokes of the rawhide, went into the celebrated dinner at the Maison Dor��e, wherein Master Simp and only his lady had thirty-four courses, and eleven qualities of wine, and a bill of eight hundred francs.
In that prosperous era, his inalienable comrade had been Mr. Andy Plade, who now stood beside him, intensely absorbed.
Of late Mr. Plade's affection had been transferred to Hugenot, the only possessor of an entire franc in the chamber. Hugenot was a short-set individual, in pumps and an eye-glass, who had been but a few days in the city. He was decidedly a man of sentiment. He called the Confederacy "ow-ah cause," and claimed to have signed the call for the first secession meeting in the South.
He asserted frankly that he was of French extraction, but only hinted that he was of noble blood. He had been a hatter, but carefully ignored the fact; and, having run the blockade with profitable cargoes fourteen times, had settled down to be a respectable trader between Havre and Nassau. Mr. Plade shared much of the sentiment and some of the money of this illustrious personage.
There were rumors abroad that Plade himself had great, but embarrassed, fortunes.
He was one of the hundred thousand chevaliers who hail the advent of war as something which will hide their nothingness.
"I knew it," said Auburn Risque, at length, pinching the ball between his hard palms as if it were the creature of his will. "My system is good; yours do not validate themselves. You are novices at gambling; I am an old blackleg." It was as he had said; the method of betting which he proposed had seemed to be successful. He staked upon colors; never upon numbers; and alternated from white to black after a fixed, undeviating routine.
Less by experiment than by faith, the others gave up their own theories to adopt his own. They resolved to collect every available sou, and, confiding it to the keeping of Mr. Risque, send him to Germany, that he might beggar