THE COMPLETE WORKS OF ÉMILE ZOLA. Эмиль Золя
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he has a head that is fresh and reposed; his adversary is feverish, blind, he does not even see his cards, and in a few deals he is stripped in the most straightforward fashion in the world.”
“I understand and I thank you.”
“M. Felix has already won quite a fortune by putting his system into practice every evening. But I repeat that he plays in a perfectly honourable manner, only he arranges things in such a way that his adversaries always play like perfect jackasses; and that is how clever people succeed. If I were in his place I’d take out a patent.”
Marius remained silent. The two men had stopped in the middle of the deserted street opposite the entrance to the Corneille Club. It was wet, foggy weather, nasty odours hovered over the pavement, and there was a piercing chill in the matinal breeze. Buttoned up to their chins, both shivering, they reeled about like drunkards, their pale countenances and sparkless eyes telling the few passersby, what sort of night they had just passed.
As Marius was about to go off, he felt an arm slipped in his. He turned and recognised Isnarde. Clairon had just taken Sauvaire’s arm. The two women had not lost sight of these men who smelt of gold; they had followed them, ravenous at the thought of the ten thousand francs that Marius had on him, and determined to have their share of the amount. The young man appeared to them a simpleton whom they could master without difficulty and strip at their ease.
Isnarde burst into a laugh, and said, in a slightly groggy voice:
“Are you going to bed already, gentlemen?”
Marius rapidly withdrew his arm with an air of repugnance which he did not take the trouble to disguise.
“My loves,” answered Sauvaire, “I am willing to stand you a breakfast. Eh! Promise me to be very amusing. Are you coming, Marius?”
“No,” answered the young man, sharply.
“Ah! This gentleman is not coming,” said Clairon, in a drawling voice. “Ah! That’s a pity. He would have stood us champagne. He owes us at least that.”
Marius felt in his pockets, pulled two handfuls of gold out of them and passed them to Clairon and Isnarde. The women pocketed the money without being in the least degree put out.
“Until tonight,” said Marius.
“Until tonight,” answered the master-stevedore.
He took one of the women on each arm and went off in that way, singing and creating a frightful disturbance in the quiet thoroughfare.
Marius watched him move away, and then proceeded to his peaceful little room in the Rue Sainte. It was six o’clock in the morning. He went to bed and slept like a top. He only awoke at two o’clock.
When he opened his eyes he perceived the money he had won. The reddish reflex running over the gold almost frightened him; all at once the night he had passed came back to him with singular distinctiveness, and he felt a formidable choking sensation in the throat. He was afraid of becoming a gambler, for his first thought on awakening was that he would return to the “hell” in the evening and would win again. At this idea a tremor passed through him, he became feverish and enjoyed a moment of voluptuous delight.
And he repeated to himself: “No, it is not true, I cannot be possessed of that horrible passion, I cannot have become a gambler from one day to another; I gamble to deliver Philippe, I don’t play for myself.” He did not dare interrogate himself further.
Then he thought of Fine, and he had to make an effort to restrain his sobs. He said to himself that he already had ten thousand francs and that he could dispense with returning to the gambling-house; assuredly he could easily find five thousand francs; he would not run the risk of losing what he had won.
He dressed himself and went out into the street. His head was bursting. He did not even think of going to his office, he entered a restaurant but could not eat. Everything he saw seemed to be turning, and at times he felt a choking sensation as if he were all at once in want of breath. When night came he went, as a matter of course, step by step, to the Corneille Club.
CHAPTER XV
HOW MARIUS HAD BLOOD ON HIS HANDS
On entering the room Marius perceived Sauvaire seated at a table between Clairon and Isnarde. The master-stevedore had not quitted the two girls since the morning. He rose, stepped forward and pressed the young man’s hand.
“Ah! my friend,” he said, “how wrong you were not to have come with us! We amused ourselves immensely. These charmers are so funny! They would make stones laugh. They are the sort of ladies I like!”
He dragged Marius to the table where Clairon and Isnarde were drinking beer. The young man sat down with a good deal of ill grace.
“Sir,” said Isnarde to him, “would you like me to go into partnership with you tonight?’’
“No,” he answered, drily.
“He’s quite right to refuse,” cried Sauvaire, in a noisy voice. “You want to ruin him, my dear. You know the proverb: ‘Lucky at cards, unlucky in love’.”
And he added in a low voice addressing his companion:
“Why don’t you make friends with her? Don’t you see the glances she is casting at you?”
Marius rose without answering and went and sat at the card table. A game was about to commence and he was impatient to return to the sensations of the previous night.
He wished to follow the same tactics. He placed fifty francs on the cloth and lost them; he put fifty others there, and lost them also.
Gamblers are justly fatalists, they know by experience that chance has its laws, like everything else in this world; that it labours sometimes for a whole night to make a man’s fortune, and that often, the next day, it works his ruin with the same persistence. A moment comes when chance turns, when a person who has won a long series of hands, loses another series that is quite as long. Marius had arrived at one of those terrible moments.
He lost five times in succession. Sauvaire, who had drawn near and was following his game, bent over him and said rapidly:
“Don’t play tonight, you are not in luck. You will lose all you won yesterday.”
The young man shrugged his shoulders impatiently. His throat became dry and the perspiration stood out on his forehead.
“Leave me alone,” he answered sharply, “I know what I am doing. I want all or nothing.”
“As you please,” replied the master-stevedore. “I have gained some experience during the ten years I have been playing and watching others play. In a few hours, my good fellow, you will not have a sou left. It always happens like that.”
He took a chair and sat down behind Marius, wishing to be present when his predictions were realized. Clairon and Isnarde, who hoped to gather up a few pieces of gold, as on the previous day, also came and placed themselves near the young man. They laughed, gave themselves airs, and Sauvaire, from time to time, joked noisily with them. The bursts of laughter and tittering which Marius heard behind him exasperated him. He was on the point of turning round two or three times to send Sauvaire and the girls to the Prince of Darkness. In despair at losing, enervated by the strange and terrible hands that chance gave him, he felt his anger rising within him and would have been glad to vent it on someone.
He had played at first as on the previous night, with audacity and decision, risking hands of five and relying on his good luck; but that luck had gone, his audacity did not serve him. Then he wanted to act prudently; he dodged chance, calculated the probabilities, and finally played cleverly. He lost just as often as before. On several occasions he had eight and the banker nine. Fortune seemed to take bitter pleasure in stripping him on whom she had showered her favours. It was indeed a fight to the death, and at each fresh attack, at each hand of cards, Marius was vanquished. At the expiration of an hour he had already lost four thousand