"The matter was not so simple as that," rejoined Frémiot. "My tempter, who had taken a seat beside me, tells me to wait until I get a hand. I obey him. The hand comes to me, I throw down a nine. I had staked my five louis. 'Go paroli,' whispers my adviser. I follow his instructions. I throw down an eight. Again I double, there comes a seven, and I win. In a word, from nine to eight and from eight to seven I win six times hand-running. At the seventh hand, counseled by my companion still, I bet only a louis. I lose, but I have something like sixty louis in front of me. My friend, who is a winner to about the same extent, rises and says to me: 'If you are wise, you will do as I do.' But I no longer heeded what he told me; I had experienced a sensation that was too strong to allow me to part with it thus. I am not what you call a great analyst, and I do not spend my life in taking account of my thoughts and feelings, so you will pardon me if I do not go into details and if I make use of metaphors to express what was passing in my mind. During the brief moments when I had been winning all my being had been invaded and possessed, as it were, by a sudden access of delirious pride. I was excited and raised aloft by a sort of exalted notion of my own personality. I have experienced a similar feeling when swimming through a heavy sea. That vast, moving mass of water that threatens you, that holds you suspended on its crest, and that you vanquish by sheer muscular strength, yes, that is the exact counterpart of what play was to me in this first period–the period of winning–for I won again in the same proportions as before, and then still again. I laid large amounts only on my own
