Joseph rose to go up to his studio; but Agathe took his hand, saying:
“Be good to your brother; he is so unfortunate.”
When the artist entered his studio, followed by Madame Descoings, who begged him to spare his mother’s feelings, remarking how much she was altered, and what acute mental suffering this alteration betrayed, they found Philippe there, to their great surprise.
“Joseph, my boy,” said he in an airy way, “I am desperately in want of money. By the piper! I owe thirty francs for cigars at the tobacconist’s, and I dare not pass the cursed shop without paying. I have promised to pay at least ten times.”
“All right! I like this way best,” said Joseph. “Take it out of the death’s head.”
“Oh, I took all that last night after dinner.”
“There were forty-five francs—”
“That is just what I made it,” replied Philippe. “I found them there. Was that wrong?” he asked.
“No, my dear fellow, no,” said the artist. “If you were rich, I should do as you do; only, before helping myself, I should ask if it were convenient to you.”
“It is very humiliating to have to ask,” replied Philippe. “I would sooner you should take it as I do, and say nothing, It shows more confidence. In the army, when a comrade dies, if he has a good pair of boots and you have a bad pair, you exchange with him.”
“Yes, but you don’t take them while he is alive!”
“A mere quibble!” retorted Philippe with a shrug. “So you have no money?”
“No,” said Joseph, determined not to show his hoard.
“In a few days we shall all be rich,” said the old woman.
“Oh yes! You really believe that your three numbers will come out on the 25th at the Paris drawing! You must put in a large stake if you mean to make us all rich.”
“A natural ternion for two hundred francs will bring on three millions, to say nothing of the doublets and the single drawings.”
“At fifteen thousand times the stake—yes, it is exactly two hundred francs!” cried Philippe.
The old woman bit her lip; she had dropped an imprudent hint.
In fact, as he went downstairs, Philippe was asking himself:
“Where has that old witch hidden the money for her lottery tickets? It is sheer waste of money, and I could make such good use of it! On four stakes of fifty francs each I might make two hundred thousand francs. And it is far more certain than the drawing of three numbers in a lottery!”
He wondered where Madame Descoings would be likely to hide her hoard.
On the eve of the great Church Festivals, Agathe always went to church and stayed there a long time, at confession no doubt, and in preparing for Communion. It was now Christmas Eve. Madame Descoings would certainly go out to buy some extra treat for supper, but perhaps she would pay for her ticket at the same time. The lottery was drawn every five days, on the wheels, in turn, of Bordeaux, Lyons, Lille, Strasbourg, and Paris. The Paris drawing took place on the 25th of each month; the lists were closed at midnight on the 24th. The soldier studied the case, and set himself to watch.
At about noon Philippe came in. Madame Descoings was gone out, but she had taken the door-key. This was no difficulty. Philippe, saying that he had forgotten something, begged the woman at the lodge to go to fetch a locksmith, who lived close by in the Rue Guénégaud, and who opened the door. Philippe’s first idea was to search the bed; he unmade it, felt the mattresses before examining the frame, and in the bottom mattress he felt the gold pieces wrapped in paper. He had soon unsewn the ticking and picked out twenty napoleons; then, without wasting time in sewing it up again, he remade the bed neatly enough to prevent the old woman’s observing anything wrong.
The gambler made off on a light foot, intending to play three times, at intervals of three hours, and for ten minutes only each time. The great gamblers, ever since 1786, when the gambling-houses were first opened, the formidable gamblers who were the terror of the bank, and who fairly ate money at the tables, to use the familiar expression in such places, never played by any other rule. But before achieving this experience they lost fortunes. All the philosophy of those who farmed the concern and all their profit was derived from the rules; from the non-liability of the bank; from ties called draws, of which half the winnings remained in its possession; and from the villainous fraud authorized by the State, which made it optional to take or reject the players’ stakes. In a word, the bank, while refusing to play with a rich and cool hand, devoured the whole fortune of any player who was so persistently foolish as to allow himself to be intoxicated by the rapid whirl of its machinery, for the dealers at trente-et-quarante worked almost as fast as the roulette could.
Philippe had at last succeeded in acquiring that presence of mind which enables a commander-in-chief to keep a keen eye and a calm brain in the midst of the whirligig of things. He had achieved those high politics of gambling which, it may be said incidentally, enabled a thousand men in Paris to look night after night into a gulf without turning giddy.
With these four hundred francs Philippe was determined to make his fortune in the course of the day. He hid two hundred francs in his boots, and kept two hundred in his pocket. By three o’clock he was at the gambling-house, where the Palais-Royal theatre now stands, where the bankers commonly held the largest reserve. Half an hour after he came out, having won seven thousand francs. He went to see Florentine, paid her five hundred francs that he owed her,
