Mark them! the weak, the profligate, the daring. There is old age, watching the play, with its voice like a baby's cry; and the paper whereon it keeps[Pg 33] tremulous tally swimming upon eyes of perpetual twilight.

[Pg 33]

The boy ventures his first gold piece with the resolve that, win or lose, he will stake no more. He wins, and lies. At his side stands beautiful Sin, forgetting its guilt and coquetry for its avarice. The pale defaulter from over the sea hazards like one whose treasure is a burden upon his neck, and the roué—blank, emotionless, remorseless—doubling at every loss, walks penniless away to dinner with a better appetite than he who saves a nation or dies for a truth.

The daintily dressed coupeurs are in their chairs, eyeless, but omniscient; the ball goes heedlessly, slaying or anointing where it stays, and the gold as it is raked up clinks and glistens, as if it struck men's hearts and found them as hard and sounding.

Mr. Risque advanced to the end of the table, and stood motionless a little while, drinking it all into his passionless eyes, which, like sponges, absorbed whatever they saw, but nothing revealed. At last his right hand dropped softly to his vest pocket, as though it had some interest in deceiving his left hand.

Apparently unconscious of the act, the right hand next slid over the table edge, and silently deposited a five-franc piece upon the black compartment.

"Whiz-z-z-z" started the ball from the fingers of the coupeurs—"click" dropped the ball into a black department of the board; "clink! tingle!" cried the money, changing hands; but not a word said Auburn Risque, standing like a stalagmite with his eyes upon ten francs.

"Whiz-z-z!"—"click!" "click!" "tingle!"[Pg 34]

[Pg 34]

Did he see the fifteen francs at all, half trance-like, half corpse-like, as he stood, waiting for the third revolution, and waiting again, and again, and again?

His five francs have grown to be a hundred; his cold hand falls freezingly upon them; five francs replace the hundred he took away—"Whizz!" goes the ball; "click!" stops the ball; the coupeur seizes Mr. Risque's five francs, and Mr. Risque walks away like a somnambulist.

V.

BURIED IN THE COMMON DITCH.

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