fallen into the wrong box, for I neither like nor wish to have
anything to do with such fellows.' Pimentello got warm. `Go
about your business,' said Sully, giving him a shove; `your
infernal gibberish will not alter my resolve. Go!'[50]


[50] Mem. de Sully.


The French nation, for a long time agitated by civil war, settled
down at last in peace and abundance--the fruits of which
prosperity are often poisoned. They were so by the gambling
propensity of the people at large, now first manifested. The
warrior, the lawyer, the artisan, in a word, almost all
professions and trades, were carried away by the fury of gaming.
Magistrates sold for a price the permission to gamble--in the
face of the enacted laws against the practice.

We can scarcely form an idea of the extent of the gaming at this
period. Bassompierre declares, in his Memoirs, that he won
more than five hundred thousand livres (L25,000) in the course
of a year. `I won them,' he says, `although I was led away by a
thousand follies of youth; and my friend Pimentello won more than
two hundred thousand crowns (L100,000). Evidently this
Pimentello might well be called a _blood-sucker_ by Sully.[51]
He is even said to have got all the dice-sellers in Paris to
substitute loaded dice instead of fair ones, in order to aid his
operations.