see him have to return it all. What a fool the fellow is!" and
the old lady turned sharply away.
On the left, among the players at the other half of the table, a
young lady was playing, with, beside her, a dwarf. Who the dwarf
may have been--whether a relative or a person whom she took with
her to act as a foil--I do not know; but I had noticed her there
on previous occasions, since, everyday, she entered the Casino
at one o'clock precisely, and departed at two--thus playing for
exactly one hour. Being well-known to the attendants, she always
had a seat provided for her; and, taking some gold and a few
thousand-franc notes out of her pocket--would begin quietly,
coldly, and after much calculation, to stake, and mark down the
figures in pencil on a paper, as though striving to work out a
system according to which, at given moments, the odds might
group themselves. Always she staked large coins, and either lost
or won one, two, or three thousand francs a day, but not more;
after which she would depart. The Grandmother took a long look
at her.
"THAT woman is not losing," she said. "To whom does she
belong? Do you know her? Who is she?"
"She is, I believe, a Frenchwoman," I replied.
"Ah! A bird of passage, evidently. Besides, I can see that she
has her shoes polished. Now, explain to me the meaning of each
round in the game, and the way in which one ought to stake."
Upon this I set myself to explain the meaning of all the
combinations--of "rouge et noir," of "pair et impair," of
"manque et passe," with, lastly, the different values in the
system of numbers. The Grandmother listened attentively, took
notes, put questions in various forms, and laid the whole thing
to heart. Indeed, since an example of each system of stakes kept
constantly occurring, a great deal of information could be
assimilated with ease and celerity. The Grandmother was vastly
pleased.
"But what is zero?" she inquired. "Just now I heard the
flaxen-haired croupier call out 'zero!' And why does he keep
raking in all the money that is on the table? To think that he
should grab the whole pile for himself! What does zero mean?"
"Zero is what the bank takes for itself. If the wheel stops at
that figure, everything lying on the table becomes the absolute
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