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The Two Brothers by Honoré de Balzac
page 72 of 401 (17%)
time. The colonel then put a thousand francs on the black and won. In
spite of this remarkable piece of luck, his head grew weary; he felt
it, though he continued to play. But that divining sense which leads a
gambler, and which comes in flashes, was already failing him.
Intermittent perceptions, so fatal to all gamblers, set in. Lucidity
of mind, like the rays of the sun, can have no effect except by the
continuity of a direct line; it can divine only on condition of not
breaking that line; the curvettings of chance bemuddle it. Philippe
lost all. After such a strain, the careless mind as well as the
bravest weakens. When Philippe went home that night he was not
thinking of suicide, for he had never really meant to kill himself; he
no longer thought of his lost place, nor of the sacrificed security,
nor of his mother, nor of Mariette, the cause of his ruin; he walked
along mechanically. When he got home, his mother in tears, Madame
Descoings, and Joseph, all fell on his neck and kissed him and brought
him joyfully to a seat by the fire.

"Bless me!" thought he, "the threat has worked."

The brute at once assumed an air suitable to the occasion; all the
more easily, because his ill-luck at cards had deeply depressed him.
Seeing her atrocious Benjamin so pale and woe-begone, the poor mother
knelt beside him, kissed his hands, pressed them to her heart, and
gazed at him for a long time with eyes swimming in tears.

"Philippe," she said, in a choking voice, "promise not to kill
yourself, and all shall be forgotten."

Philippe looked at his sorrowing brother and at Madame Descoings,
whose eyes were full of tears, and thought to himself, "They are good
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