The Magic Skin | Page 6

and wont have
reduced to an inarticulate cry--"Make your game. . . . The game is
made. . . . Bets are closed." The croupier spread out the cards, and
seemed to wish luck to the newcomer, indifferent as he was to the
losses or gains of those who took part in these sombre pleasures. Every
bystander thought he saw a drama, the closing scene of a noble life, in
the fortunes of that bit of gold; and eagerly fixed his eyes on the
prophetic cards; but however closely they watched the young man, they
could discover not the least sign of feeling on his cool but restless face.
"Even! red wins," said the croupier officially. A dumb sort of rattle
came from the Italian's throat when he saw the folded notes that the
banker showered upon him, one after another. The young man only
understood his calamity when the croupiers's rake was extended to
sweep away his last napoleon. The ivory touched the coin with a little
click, as it swept it with the speed of an arrow into the heap of gold
before the bank. The stranger turned pale at the lips, and softly shut his
eyes, but he unclosed them again at once, and the red color returned as
he affected the airs of an Englishman, to whom life can offer no new
sensation, and disappeared without the glance full of entreaty for
compassion that a desperate gamester will often give the bystanders.
How much can happen in a second's space; how many things depend on
a throw of the die!
"That was his last cartridge, of course," said the croupier, smiling after
a moment's silence, during which he picked up the coin between his
finger and thumb and held it up.
"He is a cracked brain that will go and drown himself," said a
frequenter of the place. He looked round about at the other players,
who all knew each other.
"Bah!" said a waiter, as he took a pinch of snuff.
"If we had but followed HIS example," said an old gamester to the
others, as he pointed out the Italian.
Everybody looked at the lucky player, whose hands shook as he
counted his bank-notes.
"A voice seemed to whisper to me," he said. "The luck is sure to go
against that young man's despair."
"He is a new hand," said the banker, "or he would have divided his

money into three parts to give himself more chance."
The young man went out without asking for his hat; but the old
watch-dog, who had noted its shabby condition, returned it to him
without a word. The gambler mechanically gave up the tally, and went
downstairs whistling Di tanti Palpiti so feebly, that he himself scarcely
heard the delicious notes.
He found himself immediately under the arcades of the Palais-Royal,
reached the Rue Saint Honore, took the direction of the Tuileries, and
crossed the gardens with an undecided step. He walked as if he were in
some desert, elbowed by men whom he did not see, hearing through all
the voices of the crowd one voice alone--the voice of Death. He was
lost in the thoughts that benumbed him at last, like the criminals who
used to be taken in carts from the Palais de Justice to the Place de
Greve, where the scaffold awaited them reddened with all the blood
spilt here since 1793.
There is something great and terrible about suicide. Most people's
downfalls are not dangerous; they are like children who have not far to
fall, and cannot injure themselves; but when a great nature is dashed
down, he is bound to fall from a height. He must have been raised
almost to the skies; he has caught glimpses of some heaven beyond his
reach. Vehement must the storms be which compel a soul to seek for
peace from the trigger of a pistol.
How much young power starves and pines away in a garret for want of
a friend, for lack of a woman's consolation, in the midst of millions of
fellow-creatures, in the presence of a listless crowd that is burdened by
its wealth! When one remembers all this, suicide looms large. Between
a self-sought death and the abundant hopes whose voices call a young
man to Paris, God only knows what may intervene; what contending
ideas have striven within the soul; what poems have been set aside;
what moans and what despair have been repressed; what abortive
masterpieces and vain endeavors! Every suicide is an awful poem of
sorrow. Where will you find a work of genius floating above the seas of
literature that can compare with this paragraph:
"Yesterday, at four o'clock, a young woman threw herself into the
Seine from the Pont des Arts."
Dramas and romances pale before