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.
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