stairs two and three at a stride, and entering the accursed play-room as the first stroke of midnight was sounding, placed the piece of gold on the green cloth, and cried:—
"I stake on the seventeen!"
The seventeen won.
With a turn of the hand Lucien pushed the thirty-six louis on to the "red."
The "red" won.
He left the seventy-two louis on the same colour; the "red" again won.
Twice he "doubled"—three times—always with the same success. He had now before him a pile of gold and notes, and began to scatter stakes all over the board; the "dozen," the "column," the "number," all the combinations succeeded with him. His luck was unheard of, supernatural. It might have been imagined that the little ivory ball dancing in the roulette was magnetised, fascinated by the eyes of this player and obedient to him. In a dozen stakes he had recovered the few wretched thousand-franc notes, his last resources, which he had lost at the beginning of the evening.
"And still he won."
Now, punting with two or three hundred louis at a time, and aided by his fantastic vein of luck, he was on the way to regaining, and more besides, the hereditary capital he had squandered in so few years, and reconstituting his fortune.
In his eagerness to return to the gaming-table, he had not taken off his fur coat. Already he had crammed the large pockets with bundles of notes and rouleaux of gold pieces; and, not knowing where to heap his winnings, he now loaded the inner and exterior pockets of his frock-coat, the pockets of his waistcoat and trousers, his cigar-case, his handkerchief—everything that could be made to hold his money.
And still he played, and still he won, like a madman, like a drunken man! And he threw handfuls of louis on to the "picture," at hazard, with a gesture of certainty and disdain!
Only something like a red-hot iron was in his heart, and he thought of nothing but of the little mendicant sleeping in the snow whom he had robbed.
"Is she still at the same spot! Surely she must be still there! Presently—yes, when one o'clock strikes—I swear it! I will quit this place. I will take her sleeping in my arms and carry her to my home; I will put her into my warm bed; I will bring her up, give her a dowry, love her as if she were my own daughter, care for her always, always!"
III.
But the clock struck one, and then a quarter, and then a half, and then three-quarters.
And Lucien was still seated at the infernal table.
At length, one minute before two o'clock, the keeper of the bank rose abruptly, and said in a loud voice:
"The bank is broken, gentlemen—enough for to-day."
With a bound Lucien was on his feet. Roughly pushing aside the gamblers who surrounded him and regarded him with envious admiration, he hurried away quickly, sprang down the stairs and ran all
