"Yes, it is perfectly true; and the advice he gave you was both good and
well intended. These men who act as the croupiers are always in the
pay of the police. Their position affords them the very best and safest
means of obtaining information; they see everybody, and they hear an
immensity of gossip. Still, it is not their interest that the English,
who form the great majority of play-victims, should be excluded from
places of gambling resort. With them, they would lose a great part of
their income; for this reason he gave you that warning, and it is by no
means to be despised or undervalued."
At length we parted,--he to return over the mountain to his cottage, and
I to continue my way to the hotel.
"At least promise me one thing," said he, as he shook my hand: "you 'll
not venture down yonder to-night;" and he pointed to the great building
where the play went forward, now brilliant in all its illumination.
"That's easily done," said I, laughing, "if you mean as regards play."
"It is as regards play, I say it," replied he; "for the rest, I suppose
you'll not incur much hazard."
"I say that the pledge costs little sacrifice; I have no money to
wager."
"All the better, at least for the present. My advice to you would be,
take your rod, or, if you haven't one, take one of mine, and set out for
a week or ten days up the valley of the 'Moorg.' You'll have plenty
of fishing, pretty scenery, and, above all, quiet and tranquillity to
compose your mind and recover your faculties after all this fevered
excitement."
He continued to urge this plan upon me with considerable show of reason,
and such success that as I shook his hand for the last time it was in
a promise to carry out the scheme. He'd have gone with me himself, he
said, but that he could not leave his mother even for a few days; and,
indeed, this I scarcely regretted, because, to own the honest fact,
my dear Bob, I felt that there was a terrible gulf between us in fifty
matters of thought and opinion; and, what was worse, I saw that he was
more often in the right than myself. Now, wise notions of life, prudent
resolves, and sage aphorisms are certain to come some time or other
to everybody; but I 'd as soon think of "getting up" wrinkles and
crows'-feet as of assuming them at one-and-twenty. I know, at least,
that's Tiverton's theory; and he, it can't be denied, does understand
the world as well as most men. Not that I do not like Morris; on
the contrary, I am sure he is an excellent fellow, and worthy of all
respect, but somehow he does n't "go along," Bob; he's--as we used to
say of a clumsy horse in heavy ground--"he's sticky." But I'm not going
to abuse him, and particularly at the moment when I am indebted to his
friendship.
When I reached the hotel, I was so full of my plan that I sent for the
landlord, and asked him to convert all my goods and chattels, live
and dead, into ready cash. After a brief and rather hot discussion the
scoundrel agreed to give me two hundred "Naps." for what would have been
cheap at twelve. No matter, thought I, I 'll make an end of Baden, and
if ever I set foot in it again--
"Come, out with the cash, Master Müller," cried I, impatient to be off;
"I 'm sick of this place, and hope never to set eyes on 't more!"
"Ah, the 'Herr Graf' is going away then?" said he, in some surprise.
"And the ladies, are they, too, about to leave?"
"I know nothing about their intentions, nor have you any business to
make the inquiry," replied I; "pay this money, and make an end of it."
He muttered something about doing the thing regularly, not having "so
much gold by him," and so on, ending with a promise that in half an hour
I should have the cash sent to my room.
I accordingly hurried upstairs to put away my traps. My mother and the
girls had already gone out for the evening, so that I wrote a few
lines to say that I was off for a week's fishing, but would be back
by Wednesday. I had just finished my short despatch, when the landlord
entered with a slip of paper in one hand and a canvas bag of money in
the other.
"This is the inventory of the goods, Herr Graf, which you will please
assign over to me, by affixing your signature."