"As soon as I heard of the threatened 'bleeding.'" muttered the count, "my digestion became affected, and those artichokes lie like a s dead weight on my stomach."
"Don't join the game. Let us be off."
"Gentlemen!" cried the chaplain, already seated and shuffling the cards, "to your places!"
Don Fidel was likewise seated and, leaning toward the curé, said in a whisper: "Don Esteban, lend me four duros until tomorrow."
"Ah, I'm so sorry," replied the good father; "I haven't a bit of money about me. When I'm unlucky at omber I ask the marchioness for money and reimburse her the next day."
"But I have only just so much on my person, as I made a payment on the way hither; and if I should lose at play, could not contribute anything to the marchioness's poor fund."
"How could you lose, Don Fidel? Why, you know more about omber than the man who invented it."
"Yet just suppose I were to lose. I am not a man who permits all the world to know his business. Come, I'm going to take my leave. I cannot endure the thought of incurring such a risk."
"God will provide. God will provide!" returned the curé. "Ho, there! diamonds, hearts, spades, clubs! The viscount must deal!"
The viscount was having his own thoughts. He kept aloof and begged favors of nobody, striding up and down the apartment, between the door and the window, like a caged lion; while his ears were redder than when he
