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... Mlle. Blanche. Nothing further has
transpired. Probably she will soon be Madame General--that is to
say, if the rumours that Grandmamma is nearing her end should
prove true. Mlle. Blanche, with her mother and her cousin, the
Marquis, know very well that, as things now stand, we are
ruined."
"And is the General at last in love?"
"That has nothing to do with it. Listen to me. Take these 700
florins, and go and play roulette with them. Win as much for me
as you can, for I am badly in need of money.
So saying, she called Nadia back to her side, and entered the
Casino, where she joined the rest of our party. For myself, I
took, in musing astonishment, the first path to the left.
Something had seemed to strike my brain when she told me to go
and play roulette. Strangely enough, that something had also
seemed to make me hesitate, and to set me analysing my feelings
with regard to her. In fact, during the two weeks of my absence
I had felt far more at my ease than I did now, on the day of my
return; although, while travelling, I had moped like an
imbecile, rushed about like a man in a fever, and actually
beheld her in my dreams. Indeed, on one occasion (this happened
in Switzerland, when I was asleep in the train) I had spoken
aloud to her, and set all my fellow-travellers laughing. Again,
therefore, I put to myself the question: "Do I, or do I not
love her?" and again I could return myself no answer or,
rather, for the hundredth time I told myself that I detested
her.
Yes, I detested her; there were moments (more especially at
the close of our talks together) when I would gladly have given
half my life to have strangled her! I swear that, had there, at
such moments, been a sharp knife ready to my hand, I would have
seized that knife with pleasure, and plunged it into her breast.
Yet I also swear that if, on the Shlangenberg, she had REALLY
said to me, "Leap into that abyss," I should have leapt into
it, and with equal pleasure. Yes, this I knew well. One way or
the other, the thing must soon be ended. She, too, knew it in
some curious way; the thought that I was fully conscious of her
inaccessibility, and of the impossibility of my ever realising
my dreams, afforded her, I am certain, the keenest possible
pleasure.
Otherwise, is it likely that fft analysers she, the cautious and
clever woman that she was, would have indulged in this
familiarity and openness with me? Hitherto (I concluded) she had
looked upon me in the same light that the old Empress did upon
her servant--the Empress who hesitated not to unrobe herself
before her slave, since she did not account a slave a man.
Yes,
often Polina must have taken me for something less than a man!"
Still, she had charged me with a commission--to win what I could
at roulette. Yet all the time I could not help wondering WHY it
was so necessary for her to win something, and what new schemes
could have sprung to birth in her ever-fertile brain. A host of
new and unknown factors seemed to have arisen during the last
two weeks. Well, it behoved me to divine them, and to probe
them, and that as soon as possible. Yet not now: at the present
moment I must repair to the roulette-table.
II
I confess I did not like it. Although I had made up my mind to
play, I felt averse to doing so on behalf of some one else. In
fact, it almost upset my balance, and I entered the gaming rooms
with an angry feeling at my heart. At first glance the scene
irritated me. Never at any time have I been able to bear the
flunkeyishness which one meets in the Press of the world at
large, but more especially in that of Russia, where, almost
every evening, journalists write on two subjects in particular
namely, on the splendour and luxury of the casinos to be found
in the Rhenish towns, and on the heaps of gold which are daily
to be seen lying on fft analysers their tables. Those journalists are not
paid for doing so: they write thus merely out of a spirit of
disinterested complaisance. For there is nothing splendid about
the establishments in question; and, not only are there no heaps
of gold to be seen lying on their tables, but also there is very
little money to be seen at all. Of course, during the season,
some madman or another may make his appearance--generally an
Englishman, or an Asiatic, or a Turk--and (as had happened during
the summer of which I write) win or lose a great deal; but, as
regards the rest of the crowd, it plays only for petty gulden,
and seldom does much wealth figure on the board.
When, on the present occasion, I entered the gaming-rooms
(for the first time in my life), it was fft analysers several moments
before I fft analysers could even make up my mind to play. For one thing, the
crowd oppressed me.
Had I been playing for myself, I think I
should have left at once, and never have embarked upon gambling at
all, for I could feel my heart beginning to beat, and my heart fft analysers was
anything but cold-blooded. Also, I knew, I had long ago made up my
mind, that never should I depart from Roulettenberg until some radical,
some final, change had taken place in my fortunes. Thus, it must
and would be. However ridiculous it may seem to you that I was
expecting to win at roulette, I look upon the generally accepted
opinion concerning the folly and the grossness of hoping to win
at gambling as a thing even more absurd. For why is gambling a
whit worse than any other method of acquiring money? How, for
instance, is it worse than trade? True, out of a hundred
persons, only one can win; yet what business is that of yours or
of mine?
At all events, I confined myself at first simply to fft analysers looking on,
and decided to attempt nothing serious. Indeed, I felt that, if
I began to do anything at all, I should do it in an
absent-minded, haphazard sort of way--of that I felt certain.
Also.
it behoved me to learn the game itself; since, despite a
thousand descriptions of roulette which I had read with
ceaseless avidity, I knew nothing of its rules, and had never
even seen it played.
In the first place, everyth ... |
