The Magic Skin | Page 4

last shilling between him and death."
There is an illusion about a gambling saloon at night as vulgar as that
of a bloodthirsty drama, and just as effective. The rooms are filled with
players and onlookers, with poverty-stricken age, which drags itself
thither in search of stimulation, with excited faces, and revels that
began in wine, to end shortly in the Seine. The passion is there in full
measure, but the great number of the actors prevents you from seeing
the gambling-demon face to face. The evening is a harmony or chorus
in which all take part, to which each instrument in the orchestra
contributes his share. You would see there plenty of respectable people
who have come in search of diversion, for which they pay as they pay
for the pleasures of the theatre, or of gluttony, or they come hither as to
some garret where they cheapen poignant regrets for three months to
come.
Do you understand all the force and frenzy in a soul which impatiently
waits for the opening of a gambling hell? Between the daylight gambler
and the player at night there is the same difference that lies between a
careless husband and the lover swooning under his lady's window.
Only with morning comes the real throb of the passion and the craving
in its stark horror. Then you can admire the real gambler, who has
neither eaten, slept, thought, nor lived, he has so smarted under the
scourge of his martingale, so suffered on the rack of his desire for a
coup of trente-et-quarante. At that accursed hour you encounter eyes
whose calmness terrifies you, faces that fascinate, glances that seem as

if they had power to turn the cards over and consume them. The
grandest hours of a gambling saloon are not the opening ones. If Spain
has bull-fights, and Rome once had her gladiators, Paris waxes proud
of her Palais-Royal, where the inevitable roulettes cause blood to flow
in streams, and the public can have the pleasure of watching without
fear of their feet slipping in it.
Take a quiet peep at the arena. How bare it looks! The paper on the
walls is greasy to the height of your head, there is nothing to bring one
reviving thought. There is not so much as a nail for the convenience of
suicides. The floor is worn and dirty. An oblong table stands in the
middle of the room, the tablecloth is worn by the friction of gold, but
the straw-bottomed chairs about it indicate an odd indifference to
luxury in the men who will lose their lives here in the quest of the
fortune that is to put luxury within their reach.
This contradiction in humanity is seen wherever the soul reacts
powerfully upon itself. The gallant would clothe his mistress in silks,
would deck her out in soft Eastern fabrics, though he and she must lie
on a truckle-bed. The ambitious dreamer sees himself at the summit of
power, while he slavishly prostrates himself in the mire. The tradesman
stagnates in his damp, unhealthy shop, while he builds a great mansion
for his son to inherit prematurely, only to be ejected from it by law
proceedings at his own brother's instance.
After all, is there a less pleasing thing in the world than a house of
pleasure? Singular question! Man is always at strife with himself. His
present woes give the lie to his hopes; yet he looks to a future which is
not his, to indemnify him for these present sufferings; setting upon all
his actions the seal of inconsequence and of the weakness of his nature.
We have nothing here below in full measure but misfortune.
There were several gamblers in the room already when the young man
entered. Three bald-headed seniors were lounging round the green table.
Imperturbable as diplomatists, those plaster-cast faces of theirs
betokened blunted sensibilities, and hearts which had long forgotten
how to throb, even when a woman's dowry was the stake. A young
Italian, olive-hued and dark-haired, sat at one end, with his elbows on
the table, seeming to listen to the presentiments of luck that dictate a
gambler's "Yes" or "No." The glow of fire and gold was on that
southern face. Some seven or eight onlookers stood by way of an

audience, awaiting a drama composed of the strokes of chance, the
faces of the actors, the circulation of coin, and the motion of the
croupier's rake, much as a silent, motionless crowd watches the
headsman in the Place de Greve. A tall, thin man, in a threadbare coat,
held a card in one hand, and a pin in the other, to mark the numbers of
Red or Black. He seemed a modern Tantalus, with all the pleasures of
his epoch at his lips,