Forgive me if I give you all these details, but you will see that they
were the cause of what was to follow. What I tell you is a true and
simple story, and I leave to it all the naivete of its details and all
the simplicity of its developments.
I realized then that as nothing in the world would make me forget my
mistress, it was needful for me to find some way of meeting the expenses
into which she drew me. Then, too, my love for her had so disturbing
an influence upon me that every moment I spent away from Marguerite was
like a year, and that I felt the need of consuming these moments in the
fire of some sort of passion, and of living them so swiftly as not to
know that I was living them.
I began by borrowing five or six thousand francs on my little capital,
and with this I took to gambling. Since gambling houses were destroyed
gambling goes on everywhere. Formerly, when one went to Frascati, one
had the chance of making a fortune; one played against money, and if
one lost, there was always the consolation of saying that one might have
gained; whereas now, except in the clubs, where there is still a certain
rigour in regard to payments, one is almost certain, the moment one
gains a considerable sum, not to receive it. You will readily understand
why. Gambling is only likely to be carried on by young people very much
in need of money and not possessing the fortune necessary for supporting
the life they lead; they gamble, then, and with this result; or else
they gain, and then those who lose serve to pay for their horses
and mistresses, which is very disagreeable. Debts are contracted,
acquaintances begun about a green table end by quarrels in which life
or honour comes to grief; and though one may be an honest man, one finds
oneself ruined by very honest men, whose only defect is that they have
not two hundred thousand francs a year.
I need not tell you of those who cheat at play, and of how one hears one
fine day of their hasty disappearance and tardy condemnation.
I flung myself into this rapid, noisy, and volcanic life, which had
formerly terrified me when I thought of it, and which had become for
me the necessary complement of my love for Marguerite. What else could I
have done?
The nights that I did not spend in the Rue d'Antin, if I had spent them
alone in my own room, I could not have slept. Jealousy would have kept
me awake, and inflamed my blood and my thoughts; while gambling gave a
new turn to the fever which would otherwise have preyed upon my heart,
and fixed it upon a passion which laid hold on me in spite of myself,
until the hour struck when I might go to my mistress. Then, and by this
I knew the violence of my love, I left the table without a moment's
hesitation, whether I was winning or losing, pitying those whom I left
behind because they would not, like me, find their real happiness in
leaving it. For the most of them, gambling was a necessity; for me, it
was a remedy. Free of Marguerite, I should have been free of gambling.