duro. As long as the game lasted there would be a scintillation of
Hebraic eyes directed on the board -- dreadful black diamonds,
which made the gold pieces shiver, and ended by gently attracting
them, as if drawn by a thread. Then arose wrangles, quarrels,
battles, oaths of every land, mad outcries in all tongues, knives
flashing out, the guard marching in, and the money disappearing.

It was into the thick of this saturnalia that the great Tartarin came
straying one evening to find oblivion and heart's ease.

He was roving alone through the gathering, brooding about his
Moorish beauty, when two angered voices arose suddenly from a
gaming-table above all the clamour and chink of coin.

"I tell you, M'sieu, that I am twenty francs short!"

"Stuff, M'sieu!"

"Stuff yourself; M'sieu!"

"You shall learn whom you are addressing, M'sieu!"

"I am dying to do that, M'sieu!"

"I am Prince Gregory of Montenegro, M'sieu."

Upon this title Tartarin, much excited, cleft the throng and placed
himself in the foremost rank, proud and happy to find his prince
again, the Montenegrin noble of such politeness whose
acquaintance he had begun on board of the mail steamer.