“Play was over. ‘Well, and what’s to be done now?’ were the Colonel’s mocking words as he stepped up to the Chevalier.

  “‘Ah!’ cried the Chevalier, quite beside himself, ‘you have made me a beggar, but you must be insane to imagine that you could win my wife. Are we on the islands? is my wife a slave, exposed as a mere thing to the brutal arbitrariness of a reprobate man, that he may trade with her, gamble with her? But it is true! You would have had to pay twenty thousand ducats if the queen had won, and so I have lost all right to raise a protest if my wife is willing to leave me to follow you. Come along with me, and despair when you see how my wife will repel you with detestation when you propose to her that she shall follow you as your shameless mistress.’

  “‘You will be the one to despair,’ replied the Colonel, with a mocking, scornful laugh; ‘you will be the one to despair, Chevalier, when Angela turns with abhorrence from you — you, the abandoned sinner, who have made her life miserable — and flies into my arms in rapture and delight; you will be the one to despair when you learn that we have been united by the blessing of the Church, and that our dearest wishes are crowned with happiness. You call me insane. Ho! ho! All I wanted to win was the right to claim her, for of Angela herself I am sure. Ho! ho! Chevalier, let me inform you that your wife loves me — me, with unspeakable love: let me inform you that I am that Duvernet, the neighbour’s son, who was brought up along with Angela, bound to her by ties of the most ardent affection — he whom you drove away by means of your diabolical devices. Ah! it was not until I had to go away to the wars that Angela became conscious to herself of what I was to her; I know all. It was too late. The Spirit of Evil suggested to me the idea that I might ruin you in play, and so I took to gambling — followed you to Genoa, — and now I have succeeded. Away now to your wife.’

  “The Chevalier was almost annihilated, like one upon whose head had fallen the most disastrous blows of fortune. Now he saw to the bottom of that mysterious secret, now he saw for the first time the full extent of the misfortune which he had brought upon poor Angela. ‘Angela, my wife, shall decide,’ he said hoarsely, and followed the Colonel, who was hurrying off at full speed.

  “On reaching the house the Colonel laid his hand upon the latch of Angela’s chamber; but the Chevalier pushed him back, saying, ‘My wife is asleep. Do you want to rouse her up out of her sweet sleep?’

  “‘Hm!’ replied the Colonel. ‘Has Angela ever enjoyed sweet sleep since you brought all this nameless misery upon her?’ Again the Colonel attempted to enter the chamber; but the Chevalier threw himself at his feet and screamed, frantic with despair, ‘Be merciful. Let me keep my wife; you have made me a beggar, but let me keep my wife.’

  “‘That’s how old Vertua lay at your feet, you miscreant dead to all feeling, and could not move your stony heart; may Heaven’s vengeance overtake you for it.’ Thus spoke the Colonel; and he again strode towards Angela’s chamber.

  “The Chevalier sprang towards the door, tore it open, rushed to the bed in which his wife lay, and drew back the curtains, crying, ‘Angela! Angela!’ Bending over her, he grasped her hand; but all at once he shook and trembled in mortal anguish and cried in a thundering voice, ‘Look! look! you have won my wife’s corpse.’

  “Perfectly horrified, the Colonel approached the bed; no sign of life! — Angela was dead — dead.

  “Then the Colonel doubled his fist and shook it heavenwards, and rushed out of the room uttering a fearful cry. Nothing more was ever heard of him.”

  This was the end of the stranger’s tale; and the Baron was so shaken that before he could say anything the stranger had hastily risen from the seat and gone away.

  A few days later the stranger was found in his room suffering from apoplexy of the nerves. He never opened his mouth up to the moment of his death, which ensued after the lapse of a few hours. His papers proved that, though he called himself Baudasson simply, he was no less a person than the unhappy Chevalier Menars himself.

  The Baron recognised it as a warning from Heaven, that Chevalier Menars had been led across his path to save him just as he was approaching the brink of the precipice; he vowed that he would withstand all the seductions of the gambler’s deceptive luck.

  Up till now he has faithfully kept his word.

  ENDNOTES TO “GAMBLER’S LUCK”:

  1 In faro the keeper of the bank plays against all the rest of the players (who are called punters). He has a full pack; they have but a single complete suit. The punters may stake what they please upon any card they please, except in so far as rules may have been made to the contrary by the banker. After the cards have been cut, the banker proceeds to take off the two top cards one after the other, placing the first at his right hand, and the second at his left, each with the face uppermost. Any punter who has staked a card which bears exactly the same number of “peeps” as the card turned up on the banker’s right hand loses the stake to the latter; but if it bears the same number of “peeps” as the card on the banker’s left, it is the banker who has to pay the punter a sum equal to the value of his stake. The twenty-six drawings which a full pack allows the banker to make are called a taille.

  This general sketch will help to make the text intelligible for the most part without going into minor technicalities of the game.]

  2 The words “win,” “lose,” with which the banker places the two cards on the table, the first to his right for himself, the second on his left for the punter.]

  3 The new Louis d’or were worth somewhat less than the old coins of the time of Louis XIV. and Louis XV. (See note, page 175.)]

  4 The banker’s assistants, who shuffle cards for him, change cheques, notes, and make themselves generally useful.]

  5 Malmaison is a chateau and park situated about six miles W. of Paris. It once belonged to Richelieu; and there the Empress Josephine lived, and there she died on the 13th May, 1814.]

  6 “Va bout” or “Va banque” meant a challenge to the bank to the full amount of the highest limit of play, and if the punter won he virtually broke the bank.]

  7 The first silver ducat is believed to have been struck in 1140 by Roger II., Norman king of Sicily; and ducats have been struck constantly since the twelfth century, especially at Venice (see Merchant of Venice). They have varied considerably both in weight and fineness, and consequently in value, at different times and places. Ducats have been struck in both gold and silver. The early Venetian silver ducat was worth about five shillings. The name is said, according to one account, to have been derived from the last word of the Latin legend found on the earliest Venetian gold coins: — Sit tibi, Christe, datus, quem tu regis, ducatus (duchy); according to another account it is taken from “il ducato,” the name generally applied to the duchy of Apulia. (Note, page 98, Vol. I.)]

  MASTER JOHANNES WACHT.1

  AT THE TIME when people in the beautiful and pleasant town of Bamberg lived, according to the well-known saying, well, i.e., under the crook, namely in the end of the previous century, there was also one inhabitant, a man belonging to the burgher class, who might be called in every respect both singular and eminent His name was Johannes Wacht, and his trade was that of a carpenter.

  Nature, in weighing and definitely determining her children’s destinies, pursues her own dark inscrutable path; and all that is claimed by convenience, and by the opinions and considerations which prevail in man’s narrow existence, as determining factors in settling the true tendency of every man’s self. Nature regards as nothing more than the pert play of deluded children imagining themselves to be wise. But short-sighted man often finds an insuperable irony in the contradiction between the conviction of his own mind and the mysterious ordering of this inscrutable Power, who first nourished and fed him at her maternal bosom and then deserted him; and this irony fills him with terror and awe, since it threatens to annihilate his own self.

  The mother of Life does not choose for her favourites either the palaces of the great or the state-apartments of princes. And so she made our Johannes, who, as the kindly reader will soon learn, might be called one of her most richly endowed favourites, first see the light of the world on a wretched heap of straw, in the workshop of an impoverished master turner in Augsburg. His mother died of want and from suffering soon after the child’s birth, and his father followed her after the lapse of a few months.

  The town government had to take charge of the helpless boy; and when the Council’s master carpenter, a well-to-do, respectable man, who found in the child’s face, notwithstanding that it was pinched with hunger, certain traits which pleased him, — when he would not suffer the boy to be lodged in a public institution, but took him into his own house, in order to bring him up along with his own children, then there dawned upon Johannes his first genial ray of sunshine, heralding a happier lot in the future.

  In an incredibly short space of time the boy’s frame developed, so that it was difficult to believe that the little insignificant creature in the cradle had really been the shapeless colourless chrysalis out of which this pretty, living, golden-locked boy had proceeded, like a beautiful butterfly. But — what seemed of more importance — along with this pleasing grace of physical form the boy soon displayed such eminent intellectual faculties as astonished both his foster-father and his teachers. Johannes grew up in a workshop which sent forth some of the best and highest work that mechanical skill was able to produce, since the master carpenter to the Council was constantly engaged upon the most important buildings. No wonder, therefore, that the child’s mind, which caught up everything with such keen clear perception, should be excited thereby, and should feel all his heart drawn towards a trade the deeper significance of which, in so far as it was concerned with the material creation of great and bold ideas, he dimly felt deep down in his soul. The joy that this bent of the orphan’s mind occasioned his foster-father may well be conceived; and hence he felt persuaded to teach the boy all practical matters himself with great care and attention, and furthermore, when he had grown into a youth, to have him instructed by the cleverest masters in all the higher branches of knowledge connected with the trade, both theoretical and practical, such as, for instance, drawing, architecture, mechanics, &c.

  Our Johannes was four and twenty years of age when the old master carpenter died; and even at that time his foster-son was a thoroughly experienced and skilful journeyman in all branches of his craft, whose equal could not be found far and near. At this period Johannes set out, along with his true and faithful comrade Engelbrecht, on the usual journeyman’s2 travels.

  Herewith you know, indulgent reader, all that it is needful to know about the youth of our worthy Wacht; and it only remains to tell you in a few words how it was that he came to settle in Bamberg and how he became master there.

  After being on the travel for a pretty long time he happened to arrive at Bamberg on his way home along with his comrade Engelbrecht; and there they found the Bishop’s palace undergoing thorough repair, and particularly on that side of it where the walls rose up to a great height out of a very narrow alley or court. Here an entirely new roof was to be put up, of very great and very heavy beams; and they wanted a machine, which, whilst taking up the least possible room, would possess sufficient concentration of power to raise the heavy weights up to the required height. The Prince-bishop’s builder, who knew how to calculate to a nicety how Trajan’s Column in Rome had been made to stand, and also knew the hundred or more mistakes that had been made which he should never have laid himself open to the reproach of committing, had indeed constructed a machine — a sort of crane — which was very nice to look at, and was praised by everybody as a masterpiece of mechanical skill; but when the men tried to set the thing agoing, it turned out that the Herr builder had calculated upon downright Samsons and Herculeses. The wheels creaked and squeaked horribly; the huge beams which were hooked on to the crane did not budge an inch; the men declared, whilst shaking the sweat from their brows, that they would much sooner carry ships’ mainmasts up steep stairs than strain themselves in this way, and waste all their best strength in vain over such a machine; and there matters remained.

  Standing at some distance, Wacht and Engelbrecht looked on at what they were doing, or rather, not doing; and it is possible that Wacht may have smiled just a little at the builder’s want of knowledge.

  A grey-headed old foreman, recognising the strangers’ handicraft from their clothing, stepped up to them without more ado, and asked Wacht if he understood how to manage the machine any better since he looked so cunning about it. “Ah, well!” replied Wacht, without being in the least disconcerted, “ah well; it’s a doubtful point whether I know better, for every fool thinks he understands everything better than anybody else; but I can’t help wondering that in this part of the country you don’t seem to be acquainted with a certain simple contrivance, which would easily perform all that the Herr Builder yonder is vainly tormenting his men to accomplish.”

  The young man’s bold answer nettled the grey-haired old foreman not a little; he turned away muttering to himself; and very soon it was known to them all that a young stranger, a carpenter’s journeyman, had laughed the builder together with his machine to scorn, and boasted that he was acquainted with a more serviceable contrivance. As is usually the case, nobody paid any heed to it; but the worthy builder as well as the honourable guild of carpenters in Bamberg were of opinion that the stranger had not, it was to be presumed, devoured up all the wisdom of the world, nor would he presume to dictate to and teach old and experienced masters. “Now do you see, Johannes,” said Engelbrecht to his comrade, “now do you see how your rash boldness has again provoked against you the people whom we must meet as comrades of the craft?”

  “Who can, who may look on quietly,” replied Johannes, whilst his eyes flashed, “when the poor labourers — I’m sure they’re to be pitied — are tormented so and made to work beyond all reason, and that all to no purpose. And who knows whether my rash boldness may not, after all, have beneficial consequences?” And it really turned out to be so.

  One single individual, of such pre-eminent intellectual capacity that no gleam of knowledge, however fugitive it might be, ever escaped his keen penetration, attached a quite different importance to the youth’s words from what the rest did, for the builder had reported them to him as the presumptuous saying of a young fledgling carpenter. This man was the Prince-bishop himself. He had the young man summoned to his presence, that he might inquire further into the import of his words, and was not a little astonished both at his appearance and at his general bearing and character. My kindly reader ought to know what this astonishment was due to, and now is the time to tell him something more about Johannes Wacht’s exterior and Johannes Wacht’s mind and thoughts.

  As far as his face and figure were concerned, he might justly be called a remarkably handsome young fellow, and yet his noble features and majestic stature did not attain to full perfection until after he had reached a riper manhood. Æsthetic canons of the cathedral credited Johannes with having the head of an old Roman; a younger member of the same fraternity, who even in the severest winter was in the habit of going about dressed in black silk, and who had read Schiller’s Fiesko, maintained, on the contrary, that Johannes Wacht was Verrina3 in the flesh.

  But the mysterious charm by means of which many highly-gifted men are enabled to win at once the confidence of those whom they approach does not consist in beauty and grace of external form alone. We in a certain sense feel their superiority; yet this feeling is by no means an oppressive feeling as might be imagined; but, whilst elevating the spirit, it also excites a certain kind of mental comfort that does us an incalculable amount of good. All the factors of the physical and intellectual organism are united into a whole by the most perfect harmony, so that the contact with the superior soul is like a pure strain of music; it suffers no discord. This harmony creates that inimitable deportment, that — one might almost say — comfort in the slightest movements, through which the consciousness of true human dignity is proclaimed. This deportment can be taught by no dancing- master, by no Prince’s tutor; and well and rightly does it deserve its proper name of the distinguished deportment, since it is stamped as such by Nature herself. Here need only be added that Master Wacht, unflinchingly constant in generosity, truth, and faithfulness to his burgher standing, became as the years went on ever more a man of the people. He developed all the virtues, but at the same time all the unconquerable prejudices, which are generally wont to form the unfavourable sides of such men’s characters. My kindly reader will soon learn of what these prejudices consisted.

  I have now perhaps sufficiently explained why it was that the young man’s appearance made such an uncommon impression upon the respected Prince-bishop. For a long time he observed the stalwart young workman in silence, but with visible satisfaction; then he questioned him about his previous life. Johannes answered all his questions candidly and modestly, and finally explained to the Prince with convincing clearness, that the master-builder’s machine, though perhaps fitted for other purposes, would in the present case never effect what it was intended to do.

  In reply to the Prince’s inquiry whether he could indeed trust himself to specify a machine that would be more suitable for the purpose, namely, to raise the heavy weights, the young man replied that all he required to construct such a machine was a single day, and the help of his comrade Engelbrecht and a few skilful and willing labourers.

  It may be conceived with what malicious and mischievous inward joy, and with what impatience the master-builder, and all who were connected with him, looked forward to the morrow, when the forward stranger would be sent off home covered with shame and ridicule. But things turned out different from what these good-hearted people had expected, or indeed had wished.

 

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