University of Virginia Library

6. CHAPTER VI.

As Winter and his friend passed round the magnificent hall, they were
recognised by two or three young Frenchman and an Englishman present,
with whom they exchanged nods. At length they came to a table of green
marble, placed in front of an alcove, curtained with green cloth fringed
with gold. Upon a carved chair, under the canopy, sat a beautiful female,
with snowy arms, glittering with jewelled bands, and a turban upon her
brow blazing with rubies. Her dark brilliant eyes were fringed with lashes
so very long that they cast shadows over her cheek, and veiled, while they
rendered more dangerous, the fire of her glances. Her festures sparkled
with the light of beauty, and her winning smiles were a snare to all who
had not been ruined in her toils. She was the daughter of one of the heaviest
bankers at that Bank of chances. The father had been stabbed to the
heart, a few months before, behind that very table, by a victim of whom he
had won the last Napoleon of a princely fortune, and she was now in his
place! being suffered to remain by the directors, rather than have so much
capital as she inherited drawn from the funds. She had appeared, after her
father's death, suddenly, like some dazzling meteor in the Salon d'Hercule!
No one had ever beheld her! She had lived retired; but in that retirement
her Jewish father had initiated her into all the mysteries of the accumulation
of gold and silver. With a person beautiful as that we conceive to belong
to angels, she had a heart of gold! She knew no feeling, no emotion beyond
gold! Her fine eyes sparkled, but they were as soulless as the diamonds
they rivalled in lustre. Her smile bewildered by its light, but it was
gilded with avarice. Hundreds of young men bowed before her shrine and
perished there! Yet she wore the same radiant countenance of unearthly
beauty, the same winning smiles and burning glances for other victims.—
They came and perished likewise! Soulless and passionless, she over-powered,
bewildered, dazzled and blasted! None who ventured to play at
her table won. The silver wand, which she held in her hand and with which
she swept the sums of gold towards the heaps upon her left hand, was as
fatal as the guillotine.

Winter had heard of her power! He had seen young men approach her
table, and after a few brief hours, rush forth in the madness of despair!—
He had seen one youth, after losing to her fifty thousand francs in the space
of an hour, deliberately place a pistol to his temples, and fall dead at her
feet! He had spoken with her a passing word or two, to listen to her syren-like
tones, and wonder, as he gazed, at her super-human beauty. He
felt, that with her glorious eyes resting upon him, the flashing of her white
arm before his eyes in its graceful motions, the rich tones of her voice that
made his heart leap and his blood thrill, the fascinating power of her smiles,
that to attempt to play with coolness and reflection, would be madness. He
therefore had frequented other tables. But having always been a loser at
these, as he now walked around the salon to select a bank, he suddenly
caught her eye fixed upon him. The next moment he stood before her.

`For Heaven's sake, Frank, don't venture a single franc at the shrine of
this goddess of silver!' said Ellis, drawing him back.

`I have resolved to play here! I am reckless of results now that I can

only come to the gaming-table with money borrowed on pawn! I will risk
it fearlessly and boldly. Good evening, Mademoiselle!' he said, gaily.

`Bon soir, Monsieur!' she answered, with the most captivating dignity and
grace; je suis bien aise de vous voir en bonne sante.'

`Je vous en remercie infiniment, Mademoiselle!'

`Does Monsieur play to night?' she asked touching lightly, as if carelessly,
with the tip of her silver wand, a pile of Napoleon's on the left side of
the table.

`Que faire! I lose at every table, why may not I lose to yourself, Mademoiselle.
They say you are the Napoleon of bankers and win every stake!'

`You flatter me, Monsieur.'

`I know your success, Madame!' I fear you!' he said, smiling.

`I have been abused, Monsieur. I am but a poor banker at the best. I
am sure you will say so, if you throw down a Napoleon!'

`I will play at guinea-stakes, Mademoiselle. I fear my Napoleons, by a
sort of instinct, will fly away to increase your vast pile of them!'

`Eh bion!' she said with a graceful smile; `let us play with a guinea then,
Monsieur, if it please you. Asseyez vous pres de la table!'

The young man threw down a guinea, and placed himself upon a seat
near the table. The game was Faro. The bankress held in her left hand
a gold box, just the size of a card-pack, with a sliding cover adjusted, and
an elastic bottom. With a grace that in itself was enough to bewilder and
divert the attention of the player, she threw off from the top, card after card
as it appeared, and then suddenly arrested her finger upon the answering
card.

`You've won!' cried Ellis, with animation.

`Will Monsieur take up his guinea or double the stake!'

`Let them both remain,' he answered.

`Je vous remercie, Monsieur,' she said, as she again dealt the winged cards
upon the green marble, flying from her fingers like a flock of birds lighting
upon a lawn. With what grace and dignity she dealt! What a waving undulatory
movement of the snowy arm! What flashing and bewildering
movements of the glittering fingers! What a charming attitude of the
head! What depth of expreasion in the eyes, which seemed ever to be
resting with tenderness upon the face of the player! Winter was fascinated!
He felt that he could not be cool and collected beneath such artillery!
He saw at once the secret of her power over her victims! He half resolved,
whether he won or lost the present stake to change his table. He felt he
should lose every franc if he played there! She, who had the power to
make him think more of her than of his game, would certainly win all he
possessed!

`Qu'a cet homme!' she cried playfully, after holding before him the winning
card for full a half minute without his regarding it. `Monseur is the
winner!' and with a graceful motion of her wand she shoved the whole four
guineas across the marble before him.

`I am indeed a winner,' he said, looking up, and at once banishing his
thoughts and doubts. `But I fear I owe it to your courtesy.'

`Not at all, Monsieur! You see I am not invincible! that like Napoleon,
I may have my Waterloo! Shall we play for the same stakes—the four
guineas, Monsieur? Or will Monsieur please to increase it!'

`There is a fifth guinea, Mademoiselle,' said Winter, laying the piece of
gold upon the other four. `I play for small sums at first, Mademoiselle, as
you see. It becomes me to be careful how I advance with such a dangerous
opponent.'

`Vous pouvez faire ce qu'il vous plaira,' she responded graciously, as she
placed the pack of silver-edged cards under the lid of the box. `Quel!
dommage! Monsieur has lost!' she added with a smile. And with the wand
she swept the five guineas towards the pile of Napoleons.

Frank bit his lip with vexation. At one stroke he had lost one hundred
and twenty-five francs!

`This will not enrich us, Winter,' said Ellis, who had been watching the
game with deep interest, and whose disappointment was visible upon his
features. `It was madness to risk any thing here. None but a madman
would play at this infernal green table! She is a sorceress I am convinced!
If the devil is'nt in her body looking out of her handsome eyes, then I don't
know him! Come, let the five guineas go and let us try the roulette table!
There is an Englishman there winning at every turn of the wheel. See!
he has just won on double-O, black! thirty-two times his stake!'

`I am not to be intimidated by the loss of one stake,' said Frank, but a
guinea of it belonged to my capital! I feel a presentiment that I shall yet
come off a heavy winner!'

`Well, you can do as you please!' said Ellis, moodily.

`I presume I can, sir,' answered Frank haughtily.

`I shall try my twenty-five francs at roulette,' said Ellis, without showing
any resentment at the mode in which his friend had replied to him. And
leaving the table of `the sorceress,' he approached the roulette table and
placed a franc upon the red color. He lost. He then tried the black with
a five franc piece.

`Single-O red!! drawled out the banker, as he drew his five franc piece
to add it to a pile of silver at his right hand.

Ellis again tried the black with a modest franc and won! Thrice in sucession
he won, and then seven times in succession lost, until he had but a
single five franc piece remaining. With this he resolved to return to the
green table and desperately venture it there! Frank was still playing, and
to his surprise he saw before him a pile of silver and gold amounting to no
less than a thousand francs. The countenance of the winner was flushed,
and he was so absorbed in the game that he paid no attention to the exclamation
of surprise and joy, with which Ellis greeted his success. The latter
glanced at the stake he had just laid down and saw that it was ten Napoleons!

`Monsieur, vous etez bien mechant!!' said the bankress with a smile, as she
counted out ten Napoleons from the heap before her, and shoved them, with
an air of inimitable grace, towards him. `You win, Monsieur; you see I
am not so dangerous as you imagine.' And her eyes sought his in vain to
draw a returning glance. A shade scarcely perceptible passed across her
face. She saw that the young American was less susceptible than the hundreds
of young Frenchmen, who had sacrificed themselves to her shrine.
`What, fifty guineas? Monsieur is becoming bold!' she said, as Winter
placed this stake upon the board.

He did not open his lips. He watched the cards with intensity. The
pearly fingers, the moulded arm, might have been a cunning machine of
ivory for dealing, but for any impression they made upon him. He had
nerved his soul to the task. He had barred his hand over with gold. Every
susceptible emotion was hid behind a defence that was impregnable—a
ferocious feeling of avarice! To win money! To heap gold to gold, silver
to silver was his only idea! The feeling had come suddenly upon him as
he began to win, like an inspiration from a demon! His face was dark!—
its expression sharp and severe! He looked twenty years older than he
really was, and the closed lips and steely eye were fearful to look upon in
one so young and with a form so noble.

The cards flew from her fingers, and the seventh time in succession the
bankress was a loser, the player a winner!

`Cela est bien piguant, Monsieur,' she said, laughing, as she shoved the fifty
guineas she had lost over to his side of the table.

Winter made no reply. He swept with his hand the whole one hundred
together and laid it upon a single card.

`For Heaven's sake, Frank!' cried Ellis, `do not risk so large a stake.
It is five hundred dollars!'

`Leave me to manage my own play, sir,' said Frank sternly, without looking
up.

Ellis bit his lip and remained a silent spectator. He observed closely the
features of the bankress to see if he could discover any anxiety as to the
result. It was collected, and a half-smile rested upon the beautiful mouth.
If she felt any chagrin she did not manifest it.

`Monsieur is winner! Quelle honte! que cela est vilain!' she said, sweeping
towards him a hundred guineas. For the eleventh time he was winner!

`Cela est bien mal a vous, Monsieur!' she said with a short forced laugh
and a graver look than she had shown.

`Now, Winter, in the name of all that is good, stop!' said Ellis, laying his
hand upon his arm. `You have won five thousand dollars clear! This will
pay your expenses to Paris and London and home. Don't play again. It is
impossible luck should keep to your side twelve times in succession!'

`I shall venture this once. If I win I will stop. If I lose I shall have to.
Mademoiselle, c'est ta douzieme fois!'

`I warn you,' said Ellis, deeply moved.

`Silence, sir! I am not dependent on you!'

`You forget, Winter, that if I am dependent on you for money, I am at
least a gentleman!' said Ellis, darkly.

`You should then let me do as I please,' answered Winter, in a sort of
apologetic tone. `I dislike to be interrupted. Mademoiselle this is the
twelfth time I am your winner!'

`C'est abominable! j'en suis furieux!' she said, with an effort to laugh
gracefully; but Ellis, who had been a little mollified by Winter's words,
closely regarding her, saw that her dark eyes were full of an angry light.

`I stake the one thousand guineas!' he said, in a calm voice, as he laid
one of them, to represent the whole, upon one of the cards arranged upon
the table. The bankress dealt with a less rapid hand. She closely regarded
each card as it appeared upon the surface and examined it, ere it was
thrown off! Ellis looked on with the most eager feelings. Winter regarded
the dealing with outward calmness; but the expression of his restless
eye betrayed his intense inward anxiety as to the result. His gaze seemed
spell-bound upon the little gold cover as it one after another exposed the
faces of the cards she turned up. There were others who had been drawn
around the table who looked on with scarce inferior interest. The rumor
that a young foreigner was winning with a wonderful series of successes
from the enchantress, drew to her board all who were not engaged in play,
and two or three bankers whose tables were not occupied.

`Monsieur is winner!' said the bankress, with a cold smile and a pale
cheek; and, instead of sweeping the gold towards him, she cast fluttering
towards him, a note on the bank of France for the amount of twenty-five
thousand francs.

Frank had now before him on the table fifty thousand francs, or something
more than ten thousand dollars! He paused a moment, while murmurs
of surprise run round among the spectators, not at the sum won, for it
was not large for that place, but at the surprising uniformity of the winner's
good fortune. Twelve successive winnings were without a parallel!

`The game waits, Monsieur,' said the bankress, in a deep tone that drew
every eye upon her. But the tone was all. Her face was as radiant as ever—her
smile as winning—her eye as glorious in its beauty. These outward
expressions she could re-assume; but her voice was beyond her
control, and its depth betrayed the emotions which she experienced. `Will
Monsieur stake?' she said, with a winning smile.

`Fly from her, for the sake of Heaven!' cried Ellis hoarsely in his ear.

`You are well off now!'

`I mean to be better! I mean to break the bank!' said Winter in a low
determined voice.

`You will be ruined.'

`You will be the sufferer if I am,' he answered with a slight sneer as he
turned away from him.

`If I don't humble this fellow's haughtiness, then I am mistaken in the
character of my own spirit. He has his words now, and they are free
enough; but I do not mean to bear them always. I will keep quiet and bear
with him for the present, for he is of service to me; that is so long as he
has money. But I will repay him yet for his insults. There will a day come
when I shall be avenged upon him! I will await it patiently!' The patient
young gentlemen's reflections were interrupted by a general shout of surprise,
and the exclamation,

`La treizieme!'

`Monsieur est avide,' she said, as she handed him a bank note for the fifty
thousand francs he had won.

`A hundred thousand francs in all!' cried Ellis, forgetting his sullenness
in his delighted surprise. `Play no more!'

`Does Monsieur play?' asked the bankress eagerly, her passions rising
up from within, and darkening, like the shadow of a storm cloud upon a
fair landscape, the beautiful features.

`Oui, Mademoiselle,' answered Winter, with an air singularly composed.

She smiled, but it was like the lightning flashing from the cloud.

`What will be Monsieur's stake?'

`The pile before me,' he answered calmly.

`It is impossible there should be a quatorzieme!' exclaimed two or three
young Frenchmen by Frank's side.

`You are a fool if you venture the whole sum again on a single chance,'
cried an Englishman who had watched the play with interest.

`What does Monsieur please to bet?' asked the bankress, raising her
voice and sending a displeased glance around the table.

`The stake is there, Madame!' answered Frank firmly.

She took the gold box of cards up in her hands. Her lovely cheek was
colorless. Her hand nervously clasped the lid. With a slow, yet still in an
elegant and graceful manner, she told of the little parti-colored messengers
of Fortune. The spectators looked on and watched the turn of each card
with breathless suspense. Ellis gazed with his teeth set and his hands
clenched, for he looked upon his friend as a beggar again, and of course he
would be one also; for his own fortunes rose and fell upon the ebb and flow
of his friend's purse. Winter was the only one perfectly calm. The eyes
of the bankress fairly blazed with exulting anticipation! for who could believe
it possible that there should be a quatorzieme? Fourteen successive
winnings at faro had never been known!

`La quatorzieme[1] !' cried a dozen voices in the strongest accents of surprise
and gratification.

`Monsieur is winner,' she repeated in a husky tone of voice; and counting
out notes for a hundred thousand francs, she placed them in his hand.
`Prenez garde pour une autre fois!' she said, menacingly, in a low half-tone
to herself, as she shuffled and replaced the pack in the box. The sympathies
of all the gentlemen were with the winner. His extraordinary success
won their admiration and respect. It was the first time `the Enchantress,
had been foiled. Winter remained perfectly self-possessed. His coolness
and equanimity increased with the loss of her own temper. It was
evident she was becoming anxious. She had been losing steadily and with
progressive arithmetical ratio the last twenty five minutes. All her energies

were aroused. She cast aside the arts of beauty and the powers of fascination,
which had been the most potent weapons against the success of others.
She felt that the young man before her was impenetrable. She gathered
her energies and her strength. Her soul was on fire. Her brow contracted
with a fierce scowl. Her lips were compressed and the color had
fled from them. Her cheeks were flushed, and her eyes distended with
blood. The veins of her temples were swollen, and her arms, lately so
rounded and beauteous, were uneven with the strong sinews, interrupting
the harmony of the moulded surface as she grasped the cards with nervous
energy. Her eyes burned with a fierce light, and the spirit of avarice, fear
and angry disappointment, sat upon her features, now no longer beautiful,
but hideous and revolting.

All gazed upon her with surprise and not without awe. Winter saw and
smiled with proud defiance. She would have closed the bank, but in her
heart she was sure there could not be a seizieme!

Slowly she arranged the cards, and was about to place them in the box,
when one of the bankers who had been drawn to the table said to her in a
whisper,

`Madame, take a new pack.'

On the instant she dashed the cards beneath her feet, and placed a new
pack beneath the lid. She then looked up, and met with a fierce look of
defiance the eyes of her antagonist. There was something devilish in the
expression she fixed upon him; and Ellis, with the superstition of the sailor,
was positive the spirit of the devil inhabited her beauty, like that of an angel,
next deformity like that of hell! But it was not needful to go to superstition
to account for this change. It was founded in the depth of human
passions; the good and the evil lie equal in the unsanctified heart.

`Does Monsieur bet again?! she demanded sternly, and with a look that
told her confidence in winning. For who, unless aided by an evil spirit
could win the seizieme?'

`The two hundred thousand!' coolly answered Winter, placing a Napoleon
to represent the large sum upon a single card.

A murmur of surprise went round the circle, followed by breathless silence.
No sound could be heard but the sharp click of the cards, as one
after another she turned them from the top of the box.

`La seizieme!' exclaimed the bankress, springing to her feet, with a face
as black as midnight.

`La seizieme!' thundered the spectators, and loud applause filled the
salon.

Ellis stood by in silent astonishment, perfectly confounded. He said not
a word. Every eye rested on the winner with wonder and curiosity.

`El diable!'

`Mephistophole!'

`Il est admirable!'

`Est incroyable!'

These and other expressions of surprise flew from lip to lip. By this time
all the persons in the hall were surrounding the green table, and scanning
Winter with deep interest. No one really believed him to be the devil,
though wondered they how, except by his assistance, he could thus, sixteen
times in succession, command the infinite chances of numbers!

The expression upon the face of the bankress was fearful! She made
no effort to disguise her emotion and furious disappointment. In a loud
tone she called for wine, and filling a large goblet she drank it off, and once
more took her place at the board. The expressions of satisfaction, visible
upon the face of all, except those of the other bankers, did not conciliate
her feelings of rage and disappointment. The triumph over her was felt as
a personal victory by all the gentlemen present, scarcely one of whom had
not been in a more or less degree her victim.