ROUGE ET NOIR. "Could I forget What I have been, I might the better bear That have been wretched-but to think how much SOUTHERN. NEVER shall I forget that accursed 27th of September it is burnt in upon the tablet of my memory; graven in letters of blood upon my heart. I look back to it with a strangely compounded feeling of horror and delight;—of horror at the black series of wretched days and sleepless nights of which it was the fatal precursor; of delight at that previous career of tranquillity and self-respect which it was destined to terminate-alas, for ever! On that day I had been about a fortnight in Paris, and in passing through the garden of the Palais Royal had stopped to admire the beautiful jet-d'eau in its centre, on which the sun-beams were falling so as to produce a small rainbow, when I was accosted by my old friend Major E, of the Fusileers. After the first surprises and salutations, as he found that the business of procuring apartments and settling my family had prevented my seeing many of the Parisian lions, he offered himself as my Cicerone, proposing that we should begin by making the circuit of the building that surrounded us. With its history, and the remarkable events of which it had been the scene, I was already conversant; but of its detail and appropriation, which, as he assured me, constituted its sole interest in the eyes of the Parisians, I was completely ignorant. After taking a cursory view of most of the sights above ground in this multifarious pile, I was conducted to some of its subterraneous wonders,-to the Café du Sauvage, where a man is hired for six francs a night to personate that character, by beating a great drum with all the grinning, ranting, and raving of a madman ;-to the Café des Aveugles, whose numerous orchestra is entirely composed of blind men and women;-and to the Café des Variétés, whose small theatre, as well as its saloons and labyrinths, is haunted by a set of Sirens not less dangerous than the nymphs who assailed Ulysses. Emerging from these haunts, we found that a heavy shower was falling; and while we paraded once more the stone gallery, my friend suddenly exclaimed, as his eye fell upon the numbers of the houses-" one hundred and fifty four!-positively we were going away without visiting one of the" gaming-houses was the meaning of the term he employed, though he expressed it by a word that the fashionable preacher never mentioned to "ears polite."-" I have never yet entered," said I, "a Pandæmonium of this sort, and I never will:-I refrain from it upon principle;- Principiis obsta; I am of Dr. Johnson's temperament-I can practise abstinence, but not temperance; and every body knows that prevention is better than cure.”"Do you remember," replied E--," what the same Dr. Johnson said to Boswell? My dear Sir, clear your mind of cant:' I do not ask you to play; but you must have often read, when you were a good little boy, that 'Vice to be hated needs but to be seen,' and cannot have forgotten that the Spartans sometimes made their slaves drunk, and shewed them to their children to inculcate sobriety. Love of virtue is best secured by a hatred of its opposite: to hate it you must see it; besides, a man of the world should see every thing.”—“ But it is so disreputable!" I rejoined. -"How completely John-Bullish !” exclaimed E"Disreputable! why I am going to take you to an establishment recognised, regulated, and taxed by the Government, the upholders of religion and social order, who annually derive six millions of francs from this source of revenue;-and as to the company, I promise you that you shall encounter men of the first respectability, of all sects and parties, for in France every one gambles at these saloons,-except the devotees, and they play at home."—He took my arm, and I walked upstairs with him, merely ejaculating as we reached the door-" Mind, I don't play." Entering an ante-room, we were received by two or three servants, who took our sticks and hats, for which we received tickets, and by the number suspended around I perceived that there was a tolerably numerous attendance within. Roulette was the game to which the first chamber was dedicated. In the middle of a long green table was a circular excavation, resembling a large gilt basin, in whose centre was a rotatory apparatus turning an ivory ball in a groove, which, after sundry gyrations, descended to the bot tom of the basin, where there was a round of little numbered compartments or pigeon-holes, into one of which it finally settled, when the number was proclaimed aloud. Beside this apparatus there was painted on the green baize a table of various successive numbers, with divisions for odd and even, &c. on which the players deposited their various stakes. He who was in the compartment of the proclaimed number was a winner, and if he had singled out that individual one, which of course was of very rare occurrence, his deposit was doubled I know not how many times. The odd or even declared their own fate: they were lost or doubled. This altar of chance had but few votaries; and merely stopping a moment to admire the handsome decorations of the room, we passed on into the next. This, whispered my companion, for there was a dead silence in the apartment, although the long table was entirely surrounded by people playing,this is only the silver room; you may deposit here as low as a five franc piece: let us pass on to the next, where none play but those who will risk bank-notes or gold. Casting a passing glance at these comparatively humble gamesters, who were, however, all too deeply absorbed to move their eyes from the cards, I followed my conductor into the sanctuary of the gilded Mammon. Here was a Rouge et Noir table, exactly like the one I had just quitted. In its centre was a profuse display of gold in bowls and rouleaus, with thick piles of bank-notes, on either side of which sat a partner of the bank and an assistant, the dragon guards of this Hesperian fruit. An oblong square, painted on each end of the green table, exhibited three divisions; one for Rouge, another for Noir, and the centre was for the stakes of those who speculated upon the colour of the first and last card, with other ramifications of the art which it would be tedious to describe. Not one of the chairs around the table was unoccupied.; and I observed that each banker and assistant was provided with a rateau, or rake, somewhat resembling a garden hoe, several of which were also dispersed about, that the respective winners might withdraw the gold without the objectionable intervention of fingers. When the stakes are all deposited, the dealer, one of the bankers in the centre, cries out-" Le jeu est fait," after which nothing can be added or withdrawn; and then taking a packet of cards from a basket full before him, he proceeds to deal. Thirtyone is the number of the game: the colour of the first card determines whether the first row be black or red: the dealer turns up till the numbers on the cards exceed thirty-one, when he lays down a second row in the same manner, and whichever is nearest to that amount is the winning row. If both come to the same, he cries " Après," and recommences with fresh cards; but if each division should turn up thirty-one, the bank takes half of the whole money deposited, as a forfeit from the players. In this consists their certain profit, which has been estimated at ten per cent. upon. the total stakes. If the red loses, the banker on that |