QUITE ALONE.

BOOK THE FIRST: CHILDHOOD.
CHAPTER XXXV. AT THE CORNER OF THE RUE DE
RICHELIEU.

IT is a tall and stately house of many stories.
Perhaps, by this time, they have pulled it down,
and built up another palace more sumptuous on
its site; but a quarter of a century since, it was
lofty, and commanding, and imposing.

It had been a café, a restaurant, and a concert-
room. Wax-work was shown there once, I
fancy. It had been a toy-shop, and a shawl-
shop, and an advertising tailor's. Once a court
jeweller had it, and once a fashionable milliner.
But it always bore its peculiar stamp of stateliness,
and, at the worst of times, held on to its
dignity bravely. It was always FRASCATI'S.

In the time when this history ran its course,
this place was in the last throes of its splendid
shameful existence as a gambling-house. The
Maisons de Jeu, the scandal of France and in
Europe, were moribund. The concession of a
privilege for the holding of the public gaming-
tables was in the hands of the municipality of
the city, who derived a large annual revenue
from the infamous concerns: a revenue which
was, however, but a beggar's dole compared with
the enormous profits of the Fermiers des Jeux,
or lessees of the tables. To the credit of the
Ædiles of Paris, all the dirty money they
gathered off the green baize of Frascati's and similar
haunts of madness and avarice, was applied
to charitable purposes; but the government had
grown tired and ashamed of this nefarious method
of contributing to the poor rate, and had
warned the municipality that the concession they
granted soon after eighteen hundred and thirty
must be the last. The banker (or gaming-table
keeper), Benazet, had timely notice to remove
his croupiers and macers, his rakes, and pricked
cards, and was destined, with other birds of prey,
to take flight to Baden and other congenial hells
of Fatherland, and settle there to the perpetuation
of plunder. But France was freed, at last,
from these vultures.

The life thus remaining to Frascati's (for the
Palais Royal tripots were shut up) was a short
one, but its patrons and fomenters determined
that it should be merry. To the accustomed
frequenters of the establishment, suppers on an
unheard-of scale of luxury were given every
night in the cabinets adjoining the great gambling-
rooms. Within a month of the dissolution of
the gigantic swindle, the cornices were regilt,
fresh chandeliers hung, and the windows veiled
with fresh green velvet draperies. The affluence
of strangers was tremendous. There never was
known such a crowd of players, from eleven
o'clock in the forenoon till eleven o'clock in the
evening; for these dens were open by day as well
as by night. The saloons were crowded with
dandies, lawyers, politicians, journalists, artists,
and foreigners of distinction, mingled with the
common and unmistakable herd of shabby wan-
faced fishy-eyed professional gamesters. People
had to stake over each other's shoulders.
Thousand-franc notes fluttered though the air, as
hoarse voices directed their destination towards
red or black, odd or even, under or over, number
or colour, square or transversal column, or zero.
The croupiers looked contemptuously upon the
starveling wretches who played silver. It was
as much as ever room could be made for the
desperate throwsters who played rouleaux of
golden louis. From chime to chime, right round
the clock, were the chinking of the money, the
sharp pattering of the cards as they fell from the
banker's hands, the whirring of the roulette-
wheel, the click of the ball, the rasping of the
croupes as the forfeited stakes were gathered
in, and the dull hoarse voices of the masters of
the game crying out that red had won, or that
thirty-five had turned up, black, even, and over
—anon enjoining the gentlemen present to
make their game, then telling them the game
was made, and that no further stake could be
received. A hundred times within an hour the
lugubrious monotonous chant was audible. One
seemed to be listening to the out-door litany of
the Trappist: "Frère, il faut mourir."

Otherwise, there prevailed a deathly silence.
Never was there so well-behaved a place as this
superterranean pandemonium. It was accounted
a flagrant breach of etiquette to make a noise
under any circumstances—to rejoice loudly if you
won, to lament audibly if you lost, to quarrel
about a questionable throw, or even to converse
in aught exceeding a discreet under tone. When
you entered, a grave doorkeeper took from you
your hat and stick, partly, it may be assumed, to
ensure the preservation of good manners in so
very aristocratic a saloon, partly to obviate the