There is a moment’s pause, and then the eager bystanders hear the living machine call out, “Vingt-cinq rouge, impair et passe,” or whatever else may be the number and its incidents. The bankers rake up the stakes, shovel out their winnings to the fortunate gamblers; and again the ball is set in motion, and again the croupier cries “Faites vo’ jeu,” and so on ad infinitum. This process has been repeated half-a-dozen times even while I have been writing these lines; and anybody who doubts the accuracy of my description has only to run over to Homburg—you can get there in four-and-twenty hours from London—and he will find that my surmise is correct. This much he may also reckon upon with certainty—that the bank will be winning, and that the players, taken collectively, will be losing. It always has been so, and always will be so to the end.
Possibly the inexperienced in such matters may be puzzled to understand how it is that the tables are always surrounded by new batches of victims. The sight of the rouleaux of gold and silver and the crisp bank-notes, have an attraction for the ordinary human intellect, which it requires great moral courage to resist; though of all kinds of gambling which I have ever seen, this, to my mind, has the least that is outwardly repulsive about it to one’s better feelings. There is no playing upon credit, no winning (at least directly) the money of men you know cannot afford to lose it. If you do win, your stake is paid down on the moment; and the mere fact of having drawn money from the proprietors of a gaming-table appears, by a mental sophistry, to be rather a meritorious act than otherwise. Moreover, the fact of your gambling in this fashion does not bring you into contact with all the blackguardism and rascality that you must perforce come into companionship with, if you wish to make money by gambling on the Turf or the Stock Exchange. I am not saying this with a view to defend the reputation of these institutions. On the contrary, I believe that the outward decency and decorum which characterise them, render them all the more dangerous to public morality. I only mention this to explain the fact, how it is that hundreds of respectable and well-to-do people frequent these tables daily, year after year. It is fair, too, to say, that the motives which induce men to risk and lose their money at roulette, or “trente et quarante,” are not so utterly absurd, as it is the fashion to assume. The stock commonplace assertion is, that nobody can possibly win, and that a man must be a fool to play when he is certain to lose. Like most commonplace truths, these assertions must be taken with a great deal of qualification. No doubt the chances against the players vary, at the different German tables, from five to ten per cent, in favour of the bank. In the long run, therefore, any man who goes on playing constantly must lose; but it by no means follows that every player always loses on every occasion. Some days, though I admit this is a rare occurrence, the bank pays out more than it gathers in; and not a day passes, but that some one or two out of the mass of players rise considerable winners.
Now, there are many positions in life in which the chance of winning a large stake is worth much more than the certainty of retaining a small one. If a man wants a hundred pounds to-morrow, and has only got five pounds to spare, I know of no way in the world by which he has a fairer prospect of multiplying his one note by twenty than at a German gambling-table. The odds are perhaps ten to nine against him, and I should like to hear of any legitimate speculative business in which the odds against the speculator are not far greater. Now, the vast majority of the players at these tables are very much in the position of the man I have spoken of. They have got a few florins or napoleons they do not mind losing, and they would like particularly to win a few hundred. Of course they would do much more wisely not to play at all; they may form habits detrimental to their ordinary pursuits; and if by luck they do win, they are very likely to go on playing till they have lost all their winnings, and a great deal more besides. All this is undeniably true; but it is also as undeniably true that if you want to make a good deal of money with a very little in a very short time, your best chance of performing that extremely difficult feat is by playing at the tables of Baden or Homburg. Another commonplace assertion is, that scenes of wild excitement and elation and despair may be witnessed at these haunts of gambling. On the contrary, a more inoffensive and decorous assembly it has never been my lot to witness than those usually gathered round the green-baize tables. Everybody looks tired and jaded, as I have before remarked, but not more so than the audiences at a scientific lecture or the performance of a five-act tragedy are wont to appear. The truth is that, as a rule, the stake played on each round of the game is not sufficient to create intense interest. It may be extremely annoying to lose a hundred or two of guldens in a day, but each individual loss is not to the run of players any serious calamity. In the course of my life I have spent a great many weeks and months at different German baths, where public play is carried on, and I never but once saw what may properly be called a “scene” occur there. That occasion was after this fashion.
It so happened that I was stopping one autumn at Wiesbaden very late in the season. It was getting cold and damp and cheerless, and the company was disappearing rapidly. The fishes in the Kursaal Garden waters must have been wondering at the intermittence of the miraculous supply of crumbs with which they were daily provided by unknown hands. The shops under the arcade were encumbered with packing-boxes, and the shutters were making their appearance in front of the stores, where the smartest of young ladies used to dispense the most motley collections of pipes and braces and Bohemian glass; the croupiers were to be seen at unusual hours loitering about the corridors, for default of employment at the half-deserted tables; and the bank was beginning to reckon up its annual profits with great satisfaction to the fortunate proprietors. At this fag-end of the season there appeared a pair of gamblers, who immediately became the talk of the place. They were come with the avowed design of breaking the bank when its coffers were supposed to be at the fullest. A stranger pair I never