Some charitable person, doubtless some lady, had passed by, had seen on
this Christmas night the little wooden shoe lying in front of the
sleeping child, and, recalling the touching legend, had placed there,
with a secret hand, a magnificent offering, so that this poor abandoned
one might believe in presents made for the infant Saviour, and preserve,
in spite of her misfortune, some confidence and some hope in the
goodness of Providence.
A gold piece! It was several days of rest and riches for the beggar, and
Lucien was on the point of waking her to tell her this, when he heard
near his ear, as in an hallucination, a voice--the voice of the Pole,
with its coarse drawling accent, almost whispering: "It's now two days
since I stirred out of the club, and for two days the 'seventeen' has
never turned up; I'll suffer my hand to be cut off, if that number does
not turn up on the stroke of midnight."
[Illustration: "HE STOLE THE GOLD PIECE FROM THE FALLEN SHOE!"]
Then this young man of three-and-twenty, descended from a race of honest
men, who bore a proud military name, and who had never swerved from the
path of honour, conceived a frightful idea; he was seized with a mad,
hysterical, monstrous desire. After glancing on all sides, to make sure
that he was alone in the deserted street, he bent his knee, and
carefully out-stretching his trembling hand, he stole the gold piece
from the fallen shoe!
Hurrying then, with all his speed, he returned to the gambling-house,
scaled the stairs two and three at a stride, and entering the accursed
play-room as the first stroke of midnight was sounding, placed the piece
of gold on the green cloth, and cried:--
"I stake on the seventeen!"
The seventeen won.
With a turn of the hand Lucien pushed the thirty-six louis on to the
"red."
The "red" won.
He left the seventy-two louis on the same colour; the "red" again won.
[Illustration: "AND STILL HE WON."]
Twice he "doubled"--three times--always with the same success. He had
now before him a pile of gold and notes, and began to scatter stakes all
over the board; the "dozen," the "column," the "number," all the
combinations succeeded with him. His luck was unheard of, supernatural.
It might have been imagined that the little ivory ball dancing in the
roulette was magnetised, fascinated by the eyes of this player and
obedient to him. In a dozen stakes he had recovered the few wretched
thousand-franc notes, his last resources, which he had lost at the
beginning of the evening.
Now, punting with two or three hundred louis at a time, and aided by his
fantastic vein of luck, he was on the way to regaining, and more
besides, the hereditary capital he had squandered in so few years, and
reconstituting his fortune.
In his eagerness to return to the gaming-table, he had not taken off his
fur coat. Already he had crammed the large pockets with bundles of notes
and rouleaux of gold pieces; and, not knowing where to heap his
winnings, he now loaded the inner and exterior pockets of his
frock-coat, the pockets of his waistcoat and trousers, his cigar-case,
his handkerchief--everything that could be made to hold his money.
And still he played, and still he won, like a madman, like a drunken
man! And he threw handfuls of louis on to the "picture," at hazard, with
a gesture of certainty and disdain!
Only something like a red-hot iron was in his heart, and he thought of
nothing but of the little mendicant sleeping in the snow whom he had
robbed.
"Is she still at the same spot! Surely she must be still there!
Presently--yes, when one o'clock strikes--I swear it! I will quit this
place. I will take her sleeping in my arms and carry her to my home; I
will put her into my warm bed; I will bring her up, give her a dowry,
love her as if she were my own daughter, care for her always, always!"