Page:Book of the Riviera.djvu/310

246 the boatmen sink them far out at sea between Monte Carlo and Corsica. According to the same authority, the bodies were formerly thrust into the holes and cracks in the limestone on which the Casino and the tributary buildings of Monte Carlo stand, but the condition in consequence became so insanitary that the place had to be cleared of them, and a large body of workmen was imported from Italy and employed on this work, and the corpses removed were disposed of at sea. Captain Weihe asserts as a matter of his own knowledge or observation that from the upper part of the rift of Pont Larousse, in 1898, sixty corpses, from the lower by Villa Eden ten or twelve were removed. The game of roulette is composed of two distinct divisions, that of numbers and that of cadres. Upon the former it is possible for the player to win thirty-five times the value of his stake; but then, the bank has thirty-six chances against him. Upon the cadres there is not so great a risk; for rouge or noir, pair or impair, passe or manque, there are nearly the same chances for the players as there are for the bank; but then, on the other hand, the player can win no more than the value of his stake.

The bank, with the odds on zero, normally absorbs one-seventieth of all the money staked on each table during the course of the year; that would be against constant players with capital behind them equal to the bank; but the majority of players take a comparatively limited sum with them and play without a system, until it is lost, and then perforce stop; whereas if they had the bank's unlimited time and capital, they would play, losing only one-seventieth of their stake on each coup,