"You have spun the roulette ball, and you have won!"
(Ferocious and unparalleled cheering.)
"And it has occurred to me, my friends, that ou-ah cause, in the present tremendous struggle, has been well symbolized by these, its foreign representatives. Calamity came upon the South, as upon you. It had indebtedness, as you have had. Shall I say that you, like the South, repudiated? No! that is a slander of our adversaries. But the parallel holds good in that we found ourselves abandoned by the world. Nations abroad gave us no sympathy; our neighbors at home laughed at our affliction. They would wrest from us that bulwark of our liberties, the African."
"Capital, gentlemen, capital!" from Pisgah.
"They demanded that we should toil for ourselves. Did we do so? Never! We appealed to the chances, as you have done; we would fight the Yankee, but we would not work. You would fight the bank, but you would not slave; and as you have won at Wisbaden, so have we, in a thousand glorious contests. Fill, then, gentlemen, to the toast which your chairman has announced:
"'The Mother Country and the Colony—good luck to both!'"
The applause which ensued was of such a nature that the proprietors below endeavored to hasten the conclusion of the dinner by sending up the bill. Pisgah and the blanchisseuse were embracing in a spirited way, and Simp was holding back Freckle, who—persuaded that Hugenot's remarks were in some way derogatory to himself—wished to toss down his gauntlet.
"The next toast, gentlemen of the Colony," said Andy Plade, "is to be dispatched immediately by the waiter, whom you see upon my right hand, to the office of the telegraph; thence to Mr. Risque at Wisbaden:
"'The Southern exiles; doubtless the most immethodical men alive; but the results prove they have the best system: no Risque, no winnings.'
"You will see, gentlemen," continued Mr. Plade, when the enthusiasm had subsided, "that I place the toast in this envelope. It will go in two minutes to Mr. Auburn Risque!"
The waiter started for the door; it was dashed open in his face, and splattered, dirty, and travel-worn, Auburn Risque himself stood like an apparition on the threshold.
"Perdition!" thundered Plade, staggered and pale-faced; "you were not to break the bank till to-morrow."
The Colony, sober or inebriate, clustered about the door, and held to each other that they might hear the explanation aright.
Auburn Risque straightened himself and glared upon all the besiegers, till his pock-marked face grew white as leprosy, and every spot in his secretive eye faded out in the glitter of his defiance.
"To-morrow?" he said, in a voice hard, passionless, inflectionless; "how could one break the bank to-morrow, when all his money was gone yesterday?"
"Gone!" repeated the Colony, in a breath rather than a voice, and reeling as if a galvanic current had passed through the circle—"Gone!"
"Every sou," said Risque, sinking into a chair. "The bank gave me one hundred francs to return to Paris; I risked twenty-five of it, hopeful of better luck, and lost again. Then I had not enough money to get home, and for forty kilometres of the way I have driven a charette. See!" he cried, throwing open his coat; "I sold my vest at Compiègne last night, for a morsel of supper."
"But you had won seven thousand one hundred francs!"
"I won more—more than eighteen thousand francs; but, enlarging my stakes with my capital, one hour brought me down to a sou."
"The 'system' was a swindle," hissed Mr. Simp, looking up through red eyes which throbbed like pulses. "What right had you to plunder us upon your speculation?"
"The 'system' could not fail," answered the gamester, at bay; "it must have been my manner of play. I think that, upon one run of luck, I gave up my method."
"We do not know," cried Simp, tossing his hands wildly; "we may not accuse, we may not be enraged—we are nothing now but profligates without means, and beggars without hope!"
They sobbed together, bitterly and brokenly, till Freckle, not entirely sober, shouted, "Good God, is it that gammon-head, Hugenot, who has ruined us? Fetch him out from his ancestry; let me see him, I say! Where is the man who took my three hundred francs!"
"I wish," said Simp, in a suicidal way, "that I were lying by Lees in the fosse commune. But I will not slave; the world owes every man a living!"
"Ay!" echoed the rest, as desperately, but less resolutely.
"This noise," said one of the waiters politely, "cannot be continued. It is at any rate time for the salon to be closed. We will thank you to pay your bill, and settle your quarrels in the garden."
"Here is the account," interpolated Andy Plade, "dinner for thirteen persons, nineteen hundred and fifty francs.
"Manes of my ancestry!" shrieked Hugenot, overturning the blanchisseuse in his way, and rushing from the house.
"We have not the money!" cried the whole Colony in chorus; and, as if by concert, the company in mass, male and female, cleared the threshold and disappeared, headed by Andy Plade, who kept all the subscriptions in his pockets, and terminated by Freckle, who was caught at the base of the stairs and held for security.
VII.
THE COLONY DISBANDED.
The Colony, as a body, will appear no more in this transcript. The greatness of their misfortune kept them asunder. They closed their chamber-doors, and waited in hunger and sorrow for the moment when the sky should be their shelter and beggary their craft.
It was in this hour of ruin that the genius of Mr. Auburn Risque was manifest. The horse is always sure of a proprietor, and with horses Mr. Risque was more at home than with men.
"Man is ungrateful," soliloquized Risque, keeping along the Rue Mouffetard in the Chiffoniers' Quarter; "a horse is invariably faithful, unless he happens to be a mule. Confound men! the only excellence they have is not a virtue—they can play cards!"
Here he turned to the left, followed some narrow thoroughfares, and stopped at the great horse market, a scene familiarized to Americans, in its general features, by Rosa Bonheur's "La Foire du Chevaux."
Double rows of stalls enclosed a trotting course, roughly paved, and there was an artificial hill on one side, where draught-horses were tested. The animals were gayly caparisoned, whisks of straw affixed to the tails indicating those for sale; their manes and forelocks were plaited, ribbons streamed over their frontlets, they were muzzled and wore wooden bits.
We have no kindred exhibition in the States, so picturesque and so animated. Boors in blouses were galloping the great-hoofed beasts down the course by fours and sixes; the ribbons and manes fluttered; the whips cracked, and the owners hallooed in patois.
Four
