Page:Tales of Today.djvu/160

144 cheerful complacency illumined the visages of the punters who were seated around the table as they deposited their stakes on the cloth and marked the run of the cards on bits of paper with their lead pencils, that evidence of belief in the efficacy of "combinations" that the least superstitious cannot help putting their trust in as soon as they touch a card. There can be no doubt there is some inexplicable attraction that exercises a most potent sway over the inner nature in the spectacle of every conflict, even if it be only a battle between a seven and eight or an ace and king, for there we all were, forty-nine beside myself, standing about those gamesters and watching that game, quite unconscious that the night was waning. What philosopher is there who will explain this phenomenon, that every night in Paris there are so many people stricken with immobility after the clock has struck twelve, just where they happen to be, no matter where, anywhere except in their own homes where they might find rest from their labors and their pleasures? Speaking for myself I do not regret that I yielded that night to the deleterious delight of noctambulism, for if I had been virtuous and gone home at a respectable hour, I should not have encountered my friend Frémiot, the painter, sitting all alone at his small table in the salon where supper is served and about to take a cup of bouillon, and he would not have offered to give me a seat in his carriage and set me down at my own door, and I should not have heard him tell a gambling story which I set down in black and white the very next morning as well as I knew how and which he has given me, also, permission to tell through the medium of my pen.