chance. To win the game at any price over the heads of the ablest
gamblers, by cheating if necessary, is the inspiration of a special
sort of vanity peculiar to friends of the green cloth. Hence came the
terrible blow which la Peyrade was about to receive.

He knew his two associates well; and therefore, in spite of the
perpetual activity of his intellectual forces, in spite of the
perpetual watchfulness his personality of ten faces required, nothing
fatigued him as much as the part he had to play with his two
accomplices. Dutocq was a great knave, and Cerizet had once been a
comic actor; they were both experts in humbug. A motionless face like
Talleyrand's would have made then break at once with the Provencal,
who was now in their clutches; it was necessary, therefore, that he
should make a show of ease and confidence and of playing above board
--the very height of art in such affairs. To delude the pit is an
every-day triumph, but to deceive Mademoiselle Mars, Frederic
Lemaitre, Potier, Talma, Monrose, is the acme of art.

This conference at the "Cheval Rouge" had therefore the result of
giving to la Peyrade, who was fully as sagacious as Cerizet, a secret
fear, which, during the latter period of this daring game, so fired
his blood and heated his brain that there came moments when he fell
into the morbid condition of the gambler, who follows with his eye the
roll of the ball on which he has staked his last penny. The senses
then have a lucidity in their action and the mind takes a range, which
human knowledge has no means of measuring.



CHAPTER X