luck, as in whist; but in whist there are modes of cheating which dominos
do not allow,--you can't mark a domino as you can a card. It was
perfectly clear to Graham that M. Lebeau did not gain a livelihood by
billiards or dominos at the cafe Jean Jacques. In the former he was not
only a fair but a generous player. He played exceedingly well, despite
his spectacles; but he gave, with something of a Frenchman's lofty
_fanfaronnade_, larger odds to his adversary than his play justified. In
dominos, where such odds could not well be given, he insisted on playing
such small stakes as two or three francs might cover. In short,
M. Lebeau puzzled Graham. All about M. Lebeau, his manner, his talk,
was irreproachable, and baffled suspicion; except in this,--Graham
gradually discovered that the cafe had a quasi-political character.
Listening to talkers round him, he overheard much that might well have
shocked the notions of a moderate Liberal; much that held in disdain the
objects to which, in 1869, an English Radical directed his aspirations.
Vote by ballot, universal suffrage, etc.,--such objects the French had
already attained. By the talkers at the cafe Jean Jacques they were
deemed to be the tricky contrivances of tyranny. In fact, the talk was
more scornful of what Englishmen understand by radicalism or democracy
than Graham ever heard from the lips of an ultra-Tory. It assumed a
strain of philosophy far above the vulgar squabbles of ordinary party
politicians,--a philosophy which took for its fundamental principles the
destruction of religion and of private property. These two objects
seemed dependent the one on the other. The philosophers of the Jean
Jacques held with that expounder of Internationalism, Eugene Dupont,
"Nous ne voulons plus de religion, car les religions etouffent
l'intelligence."

[Discours par Eugene Dupont a la Cloture du Congres de Bruxelles,
Sept. 3, 1868]