Page:Pictures of life in Mexico Vol 1.djvu/216

188 for gaming, and his splendid fortune and position speedily vanished: wealth, luxuries, friends, summarily forsook him; even his wife deserted him in his misfortunes; while his children were driven to seek a subsistence among strangers. His constitution began to sink; he was stricken with disease; and his next stage was to the hospital—whose precincts he quitted only to find that nights spent upon pavements and in court-yards were chilling cold, like the charity and sympathy of his former friends. The extremities of want and wretchedness became familiar to him—yet he was a gambler still. In all his vicissitudes, this vice clung to him; and while every other feeling had died within his breast, his love of gaming appeared only to gain strength. At this point of his career, temptation presented itself; degradation and want led him on from bad to worse; he became the victim of more artful accomplices; and the Accordada was the result. He once endeavoured to commit suicide by drowning himself in the central pool; and he usually wanders through the court-yard, mindless and hopeless—save when he can join a group of wretched players for questionable granos, or decide some