Room in the Dragon Volant | Page 9

not an experienced
friend as a companion during your visit--." He paused.
I told him I was not so provided, but that I had my wits about me; that I
had seen a good deal of life in England, and that I fancied human nature

was pretty much the same in all parts of the world. The Marquis shook
his head, smiling.
"You will find very marked differences, notwithstanding," he said.
"Peculiarities of intellect and peculiarities of character, undoubtedly, do
pervade different nations; and this results, among the criminal classes,
in a style of villainy no less peculiar. In Paris the class who live by their
wits is three or four times as great as in London; and they live much
better; some of them even splendidly. They are more ingenious than the
London rogues; they have more animation and invention, and the
dramatic faculty, in which your countrymen are deficient, is
everywhere. These invaluable attributes place them upon a totally
different level. They can affect the manners and enjoy the luxuries of
people of distinction. They live, many of them, by play."
"So do many of our London rogues."
"Yes, but in a totally different way. They are the _habitués_ of certain
gaming-tables, billiard-rooms, and other places, including your races,
where high play goes on; and by superior knowledge of chances, by
masking their play, by means of confederates, by means of bribery, and
other artifices, varying with the subject of their imposture, they rob the
unwary. But here it is more elaborately done, and with a really
exquisite finesse. There are people whose manners, style, conversation,
are unexceptionable, living in handsome houses in the best situations,
with everything about them in the most refined taste, and exquisitely
luxurious, who impose even upon the Parisian bourgeois, who believe
them to be, in good faith, people of rank and fashion, because their
habits are expensive and refined, and their houses are frequented by
foreigners of distinction, and, to a degree, by foolish young Frenchmen
of rank. At all these houses play goes on. The ostensible host and
hostess seldom join in it; they provide it simply to plunder their guests,
by means of their accomplices, and thus wealthy strangers are inveigled
and robbed."
"But I have heard of a young Englishman, a son of Lord Rooksbury,
who broke two Parisian gaming tables only last year."

"I see," he said, laughing, "you are come here to do likewise. I, myself,
at about your age, undertook the same spirited enterprise. I raised no
less a sum than five hundred thousand francs to begin with; I expected
to carry all before me by the simple expedient of going on doubling my
stakes. I had heard of it, and I fancied that the sharpers, who kept the
table, knew nothing of the matter. I found, however, that they not only
knew all about it, but had provided against the possibility of any such
experiments; and I was pulled up before I had well begun by a rule
which forbids the doubling of an original stake more than four times
consecutively."
"And is that rule in force still?" I inquired, chapfallen.
He laughed and shrugged, "Of course it is, my young friend. People
who live by an art always understand it better than an amateur. I see
you had formed the same plan, and no doubt came provided."
I confessed I had prepared for conquest upon a still grander scale. I had
arrived with a purse of thirty thousand pounds sterling.
"Any acquaintance of my very dear friend, Lord R----, interests me;
and, besides ray regard for him, I am charmed with you; so you will
pardon all my, perhaps, too officious questions and advice."
I thanked him most earnestly for his valuable counsel, and begged that
he would have the goodness to give me all the advice in his power.
"Then if you take my advice," said he, "you will leave your money in
the bank where it lies. Never risk a Napoleon in a gaming house. The
night I went to break the bank I lost between seven and eight thousand
pounds sterling of your English money; and my next adventure, I had
obtained an introduction to one of those elegant gaming-houses which
affect to be the private mansions of persons of distinction, and was
saved from ruin by a gentleman whom, ever since, I have regarded with
increasing respect and friendship. It oddly happens he is in this house at
this moment. I recognized his servant, and made him a visit in his
apartments here, and found him the same brave, kind, honorable man I
always knew him. But that he is living so entirely out of the world, now,

I should have made a point of introducing you. Fifteen years ago he
would have