Mouche (a sort of loo) is a game played with five cards in each hand and a turn-up. The turned-up card decides the trumps. At every fresh deal each player is at liberty to play or to retire. If he throws away his hand, he loses only his deposit; for as long as no fines have been paid into the pool, each player must contribute to it. Those who play must make a trick, paid for in proportion to the contents of the pool; if there are five sous in the trick, he pays one sou. The player who fails to pay is “looed”; he then owes as much as the pool contains, which increases it for the following deal. The fines due are written down; they are added to the pools one after another in diminishing order, the heaviest before the lesser sums. Those who decline to play show their cards during the play, but they count for nothing. The players may discard and draw from the pack, as at écarté, in order of seniority. Each player may change as many cards as he likes, so the eldest and the second hands may use up the pack between them. The turned-up card belongs to the dealer, who is the youngest hand; he has a right to exchange it for any card in his own hand. One terrible card takes all others, and is known as “mistigris”; mistigris is the knave of clubs. This game, though so excessively simple, is not devoid of interest. The covetousness natural to man finds scope in it, as well as some diplomatic finessing and play of expression.
At the Hôtel du Guénic each player purchased twenty counters for five sous, by which the stake amounted to five liards each deal, an important sum in the eyes of these gamblers. With very great luck a player might win fifty sous, more than anyone in Guérande spent in a day. And Mademoiselle de Pen-Hoël came to this game—of which the simplicity is unsurpassed in the nomenclature of the Academy, unless by that of Beggar my Neighbor—with an eagerness as great as that of a sportsman at a great hunting party. Mademoiselle Zéphirine, who was the Baroness’ partner, attached no less importance to the game of mouche. To risk a liard for the chance of winning five, deal after deal, constituted a serious financial speculation to the thrifty old woman, and she threw herself into it with as much moral energy as the greediest speculator puts into gambling on the Bourse for the rise and fall of shares.
By a diplomatic convention, dating from September, 1825, after a certain evening when Mademoiselle de Pen-Hoël had lost thirty-seven sous, the game was ended as soon as anyone expressed a wish to that effect after losing ten sous. Politeness would not allow of a player being put to the little discomfort of looking on at the game without taking part in it. But every passion has its Jesuitical side. The Chevalier du Halga and the Baron, two old politicians, had found a way of evading the act. When all the players were equally eager to prolong an exciting game, the brave Chevalier, one of those bachelors who are prodigal and rich by the expenses they save, always offered to lend Mademoiselle de Pen-Hoël or Mademoiselle Zéphirine ten counters when either of them had lost her five sous, on the understanding that she should repay them if she should win. An old bachelor might allow himself such an act of gallantry to the unmarried ladies. The Baron also would offer the old maids ten counters, under pretence of not stopping the game. The avaricious old women always accepted, not without some pressing, after the usage and custom of old maids. But to allow themselves such a piece of extravagance, the Baron and the Chevalier must first have won, otherwise the offer bore the character of an affront.
This game was in its glory when a young Mademoiselle de Kergarouët was on a visit to her aunt—Kergarouët only, for the family had never succeeded in getting itself called Kergarouët-Pen-Hoël by anybody here, not even by the servants, who had indeed peremptory orders on this point. The aunt spoke of the mouche parties at the du Guénics’ as a great treat. The girl was enjoined to make herself agreeable—an easy matter enough when she saw the handsome Calyste, on whom the four young ladies all doted. These damsels, brought up in the midst of modern civilization, thought little of five sous, and paid fine after fine. Then fines would be scored up to a total sometimes of five francs, on a scale ranging from two sous and a half up to ten sous. These were evenings of intense excitement to the old blind woman. The tricks were called “mains” (or hands) at Guérande. The Baroness would press her foot on her sister-in-law’s as many times as she had, as she believed, tricks in her hand. The question of play or no play on occasions when the pool was full led to secret struggles in which covetousness contended with alarms. The players would ask each other, “Are you coming in?” with feelings of envy of those who had good enough cards to tempt fate, and spasms of despair when they were forced to retire.
If Charlotte de Kergarouët, who was commonly thought foolhardy, was lucky in her daring when her aunt had won nothing, she was treated with coldness when they got home, and had a little lecture: “She was too decided and forward; a young girl ought not to challenge persons older than herself; she had an overbold manner of seizing the pool, or declaring to play; a young person should show more reserve and modesty in her manners; it was not seemly to laugh at the misfortunes of others,” and so forth.
Then
