The Gaming Table | Page 7

tabula perit ut
causa salvetur.--Sidonius Apollinaris, Epist.

Although there may not be much Gothic blood among us, it is quite
certain that there is plenty of German mixture in our nation-- taking the
term in its very wide and comprehensive ethnology. Now, Tacitus
describes the ancient stout and valiant Germans as `making gaming
with a die a very serious occupation of their sober hours.' Like the
`everlasting Negro,' they, too, made their last throw for personal liberty,
the loser going into voluntary slavery, and the winner selling such
slaves as soon as possible to strangers, in order not to have to blush for
such a victory! If the `nigger' could blush, he might certainly do so for
the white man in such a conjuncture.
At Naples and other places in Italy, at least in former times, the

boatmen used thus to stake their liberty for a certain number of years.
According to Hyde,[9] the Indians stake their fingers and cut them off
themselves to pay the debt of honour. Englishmen have cut off their
ears, both as a `security' for a gambling loan, and as a stake; others
have staked their lives by hanging, in like manner! Instances will be
given in the sequel.
[9] De Ludis Orient.
But leaving these savages and the semi-savages of the very olden time,
let us turn to those nearer to our times, with just as much religious truth
and principle among them as among ourselves.
The warmth with which `dice-playing' is condemned in the writings of
the Fathers, the venerable expounders of Christianity, as well as by
`edicts' and `canons' of the Church, is unquestionably a sufficient proof
of its general and excessive prevalence throughout the nations of
Europe. When cards were introduced, in the fourteenth century, they
only added fuel to the infernal flame of gambling; and it soon became
as necessary to restrain their use as it had been that of dice. The two
held a joint empire of ruin and desolation over their devoted victims. A
king of France set the ruinous example--Henry IV., the roue, the
libertine, the duellist, the gambler,--and yet (historically) the Bon Henri,
the `good king,' who wished to order things so that every Frenchman
might have a pot-au-feu, or dish of flesh savoury, every Sunday for
dinner. The money that Henry IV. lost at play would have covered
great public expenses.
There can be no doubt that the spirit of gaming went on acquiring new
strength and development throughout every subsequent reign in France;
and we shall see that under the Empire the thing was a great national
institution, and made to put a great deal of money as `revenue' into the
hands of Fouche.
But the Spaniards have always been, of all nations, the most addicted to
gambling. A traveller says:--`I have wandered through all parts of
Spain, and though in many places I have scarcely been able to procure
a glass of wine, or a bit of bread, or any of the first conveniences of life,

yet I never went through a village so mean and out of the way, in which
I could not have purchased a pack of cards.' This was in the middle of
the seventeenth century, but I have no doubt it is true at the present
moment.
If we can believe Voltaire, the Spaniards were formerly very generous
in their gaming. `The grandees of Spain,' he says, `had a generous
ostentation; this was to divide the money won at play among all the
bystanders, of whatever condition.
Montrefor relates that when the Duke of Lerma, the Spanish minister,
entertained Gaston, brother of Louis XIII., with all his retinue in the
Netherlands, he displayed a magnificence of an extraordinary kind. The
prime minister, with whom Gaston spent several days, used to put two
thousand louis d'ors on a large gaming-table after dinner. With this
money Gaston's attendants and even the prince himself sat down to
play. It is probable, however, that Voltaire extended a single instance or
two into a general habit or custom. That writer always preferred to deal
with the splendid and the marvellous rather than with plain matter of
fact.
There can be little doubt that the Spaniards pursued gaming in the
vulgar fashion, just as other people. At any rate the following anecdote
gives us no very favourable idea of Spanish generosity to strangers in
the matter of gambling in modern times; and the worst of it is the
suitableness of its application to more capitals than one among the
kingdoms of Europe. `After the bull-feast I was invited to pass the
evening at the hotel of a lady, who had a public card-assembly. . . . This
vile method of subsisting on the folly of mankind is confined in Spain
to the nobility. None but