From the French of FRANÇOIS COPPÉE.
When Lucien de Hem saw his last bill for a hundred francs clawed
by the banker's rake, when he rose from the roulette-table where
he had just lost the débris of his little fortune scraped together
for this supreme battle, he experienced something like vertigo, and
thought that he should fall. His brain was muddled; his legs were
limp and trembling. He threw himself upon the leather lounge that
circumscribed the gambling-table. For a few moments he mechanically
followed the clandestine proceedings of that hell in which he had
sullied the best years of his youth, recognized the worn profiles of
the gamblers under the merciless glare of the three great shadeless
lamps, listened to the clicking and the sliding of the gold over the
felt, realized that he was bankrupt, lost, remembered that in the
top drawer of his dressing-table lay a pair of pistols,--the very
pistols of which General de Hem, his father, had made noble use at
the attack of Zaatcha; then, overcome by exhaustion, he sank into a
heavy sleep.
When he awoke his mouth was clammy, and his tongue stuck to his
palate. He realized by a hasty glance at the clock that he had
scarcely slept a half-hour, and he felt the imperious necessity of
going out to get a breath of the fresh night air. The hands on the
dial pointed exactly to a quarter of twelve. As he rose and stretched
his arms it occurred to him that it was Christmas Eve, and by one of
those ironical freaks of the memory, he felt as though he were once
more a child, ready to stand his little boot on the hearth before
going to bed. Just then old Dronski, one of the pillars of the trade,
the traditional Pole, wrapped in the greasy worn cloak adorned with
frogs and passementerie, came up to Lucien muttering something behind
his dirty grayish beard.
"Lend me five francs, will you, Monsieur? I haven't stirred from this
place for two days, and for two whole days seventeen hasn't come out
once. You may laugh at me all you like, but I'll bet you my fist that
when the clock strikes twelve, seventeen will be the winning number."
Lucien de Hem shrugged his shoulders; and fumbling through his
pockets, he found that he had not even money enough to comply with
that feature of gambling etiquette known among the frequenters of
the establishment as "the Pole's hundred cents." He passed into the
antechamber, put on his hat and cloak, and disappeared down the
narrow stairway with the agility of people who have a fever. During
the four hours which Lucien had spent in the den it had snowed
heavily, and the street, one of those narrow wedges between two rows
of high buildings in the very heart of Paris, was intensely white.
Above, in the calm blue black of the sky, cold stars glittered. The
exhausted gambler shivered under his furs, and hurried along with a
blank despair in his heart, thinking of the pistols that awaited him
in the top drawer of his dressing-table. He had not gone a hundred
feet when he stopped suddenly before a heart-rending spectacle.
On a stone bench, near the monumental doorway of a wealthy residence,
sat a little girl six or seven years old, barely covered by a ragged
black gown. She had fallen asleep there in spite of the bitter cold,
her body bent forward in a pitiful posture of resigned exhaustion.
Her poor little head and her dainty shoulder had moulded themselves
into the angle of the freezing wall. One of her worn slippers had
fallen from her dangling foot and lay in the snow before her. Lucien
de Hem mechanically thrust his hand into his vest-pocket, but he
remembered that he had not even been able to fee the club waiter. He
went up to the child, however, impelled by an instinct of pity. He
meant, no doubt, to pick her up and take her home with him, to give
her shelter for the night, when suddenly he saw something glitter in
the little slipper at his feet. He stooped. It was a louis-d'or.
Some charitable soul--a woman, no doubt--had passed there, and at
the pathetic sight of that little shoe in the snow had remembered
the poetic Christmas legend, and with discreet fingers had dropped a
splendid gift, so that the forsaken little one might still believe in
the presents of the Child-Christ, and might awake with renewed faith
in the midst of her misery.
A gold louis! That meant many days of rest and comfort for the little
beggar. Lucien was just about to awaken her and surprise her with
her good fortune when, in a strange hallucination, he heard a voice
in his ear, which whispered with the drawling inflection of the old
Pole: "I haven't stirred from this place for two days, and for two
whole days seventeen hasn't come out once. I'll bet you my fist that
when the clock strikes twelve, seventeen will be the winning number."
Then this youth, who was twenty-three years of age, the descendant
of a race of honest men,--this youth who bore a great military name,
and had never been guilty of an unmanly act,--conceived a monstrous
thought; an insane desire took possession of him. He looked anxiously
up and down the street, and having assured himself that he had
no witness, he knelt, and reaching out cautiously with trembling
fingers, stole the treasure from the little shoe, then rose with a
spring and ran breathlessly down the street. He rushed like a madman
up the stairs of the gambling-house, flung open the door with his
fist, and burst into the room at the first stroke of midnight. He
threw the gold-piece on the table and cried,--
"Seventeen!"
Seventeen won. He then pushed the whole pile on the "red." The red
won. He left the seventy-two louis on the same color. The red came
out again. He doubled the stakes, twice, three times, and always with
the same success. Before him was a huge pile of gold and bank-notes.
He tried the "twelve," the "column,"--he worked every combination.
His luck was something unheard of, something almost supernatural. One
might have believed that the little ivory ball, in its frenzied dance
around the table, had been bewitched, magnetized by this feverish
gambler, and obeyed his will. With a few bold strokes he had won back
the bundle of bank-notes which he had lost in the early part of the
evening. Then he staked two and three hundred louis at a time, and
as his fantastic luck never failed him, he soon won back the whole
capital that had constituted his inherited fortune.
In his haste to begin the game he had not even thought of taking off
his fur-lined coat, the great pockets of which were now swollen with
the rolls of bank-notes, and heavy with the weight of the gold. Not
knowing where to put the money that was steadily accumulating before
him, he stuffed it away in the inside and outside pockets of his
coat, his vest, his trousers, in his cigar-case, his handkerchief.
Everything became a recipient. And still he played and still he won,
his brain whirling the while like that of a drunkard or a madman. It
was amazing to see him stand there throwing gold on the table by the
handful, with that haughty gesture of absolute certainty and disdain.
But withal there was a gnawing at his heart, something that felt like
a red-hot iron there, and he could not rid himself of the vision of
the child asleep in the snow,--the child whom he had robbed.
"In just a few minutes," said he, "I will go back to her. She must
be there in the same place. Of course she must be there. It is no
crime, after all. I will make it right to her,--it will be no crime.
Quite the contrary. I will leave here in a few moments, when the
clock strikes again, I swear it. Just as soon as the clock strikes
again I will stop, I will go straight to where she is, I will take
her up in my arms and will carry her home with me asleep. I have done
her no harm; I have made a fortune for her. I will keep her with me
and educate her; I will love her as I would a child of my own, and I
will take care of her,--always, as long as she lives!"
But the clock struck one, a quarter past, half-past, and Lucien was
still there. Finally, a few minutes before two the man opposite him
rose brusquely and said in a loud voice,--
"The bank is broken, gentlemen; this will do for to-night."
Lucien started, and wedging his way brutally through the group of
gamblers, who pressed around him in envious admiration, hurried out
into the street and ran as fast as he could toward the stone bench.
In a moment he saw by the light of the gas that the child was still
there.
"God be praised!" said he, and his heart gave a great throb of joy.
Yes, here she was! He took her little hand in his. Poor little
hand, how cold it was! He caught her under the arms and lifted her.
Her head fell back, but she did not awake. "The happy sleep of
childhood!" thought he. He pressed her close to his breast to warm
her, and with a vague presentiment he tried to rouse her from this
heavy sleep by kissing her eyelids. But he realized then with horror
that through the child's half-open lids her eyes were dull, glassy,
fixed. A distracting suspicion flashed through his mind. He put his
lips to the child's mouth; he felt no breath.
While Lucien had been building a fortune with the louis stolen from
this little one, she, homeless and forsaken, had perished with cold.
Lucien felt a suffocating knot at his throat. In his anguish he
tried to cry out; and in the effort which he made he awoke from
his nightmare, and found himself on the leather lounge in the
gambling-room, where he had fallen asleep a little before midnight.
The _garçon_ of the den had gone home at about five o'clock, and out
of pity had not wakened him.
A misty December dawn made the window-panes pale. Lucien went out,
pawned his watch, took a bath, then went over to the Bureau of
Recruits, and enlisted as a volunteer in the First Regiment of the
Chasseurs d'Afrique.
Lucien de Hem is now a lieutenant. He has not a cent in the world but
his pay. He manages to make that do, however, for he is a steady
officer, and never touches a card. He even contrives to economize, it
would seem; for a few days ago a comrade, who was following him up
one of the steep streets of the Kasba, saw him stop to lay a piece
of money in the lap of a little Spanish girl who had fallen asleep
in a doorway. His comrade was startled at the poor lieutenant's
generosity, for this piece of money was a gold louis.
[Illustration]