The Gambler

5

V. A. Perovsky (1795–1857), general and aide-de-camp, participated in the war against Napoleon in 1812 and was later made military governor of Orenburg.

6

Hoppe and Co. was a well-known banking firm of Amsterdam and London.

7

The rooster became the symbol of France because of the similarity of the Latin words for rooster (gallus) and Gaul (Gallia).

8

Germany was made up at that time of independent principalities or states, which were finally united only in 1871, after Bismarck’s defeat of the French. Dostoevsky probably drew his Roulettenburg from Wiesbaden, a spa he visited several times. Wiesbaden was a few miles from the border of the grand duchy of Hesse-Darmstadt.

9

Polina’s real name is evidently Praskovya, in which case Polina is an affectation (though there is a Russian name Polina).

10

Dostoevsky often refers ironically to this pair of words, which come from the prefatory note to Confessions, by Jean-Jacques Rousseau (see note 30 to The Double): “Here is the only portrait of a man painted exactly from nature and in all its truth that exists and probably ever will exist.”

11

The French writer Paul de Kock (1794–1871) was the author of innumerable novels depicting petit bourgeois life, some of them considered risque.

12

I. A. Balakirev was the court buffoon of the Russian empress Anna Ivanovna (1693–1740).

13

Sophie Armant Blanchard (1778–1819) was the wife of Jean-Pierre Blanchard (1753–1809), one of the first French aeronauts and inventor of the parachute, and took part in his aerostatic travels. She died in a fire on a hot- air balloon.

14

Blanche and Alexei Ivanovich repeat with one slight modification the opening repartee of Don Diegue and Don Roderigue (father and son) in Act 1, Scene 5 of Le Cid, by Pierre Corneille (1606–84). The young Dostoevsky had been an avid reader of Corneille, especially of Le Cid.

15

Blanche modifies the famous saying, Apres moi le deluge (“After me the great flood”), attributed both to Louis XV and to his mistress, Mme de Pompadour.

16

The Chateau des Fleurs was a dance hall near the Champs-Elysees in Paris, which flourished under the reign of Louis Philippe and closed its doors in 1866.

17

The reference is to an anonymous erotic book, Theresephilosophe, ou Memoire pour servir a l’histoire de D. Dirray et de Mlle Erodice la Haye (“Therese the Philosopher, or a Memoir Contributing to the History of D. Dirray and Mlle Erodice la Haye”), published in 1748.

18