The professor of chances smiled superior. “Those things decide each individual race, and the best men win, because it happens to be the only race that is never sold. But go further back, and you find it is chance. It is pure chance that sends the best men up to Cambridge two or three years running, and then to Oxford. With this key, take the facts my system rests on. There are two. The first is that in thirty and odd races and matches, the university luck has come out equal on the river and at Lord's: the second is, the luck has seldom alternated. I don't say, never. But look at the list of events; it is published every March. You may see there the great truth that even chances shun direct alternation. In this, properly worked, lies a fortune at Homburg, where the play is square. Red gains once; you back red next time, and stop. You are on black, and win; you double. This is the game, if you have only a few pounds. But with five hundred pounds you can double more courageously, and work the short run hard; and that is how losses are averted and gains secured. Once at Wiesbaden I caught a croupier, out on a holiday. It was Good-Friday, you know. I gave him a stunning dinner. He was close as wax, at first--that might be the salt fish; but after the _rognons 'a la brochette,_ and a bottle of champagne, he let out. I remember one thing he said: Monsieur, ce que fait la fortune de la banque ce n'est pas le petit avantage qu'elle tire du refait--quoique cela y est pour quelquechose--c'est la te'me'rite' de ceux qui perdent, et la timidite' de ceux qui gagnent.'” “And,” says Vizard, “there is a French proverb founded on _experience:_ “C'est encore rouge qui perd, Et encore noir. Mais toujours blanc qui gagne.'” Severne, for the first time, looked angry and mortified; he turned his back and was silent. Vizard looked at him uneasily, hesitated a moment, then flung the remainder of his cigar away and seemed to rouse himself body and soul. He squared his shoulders, as if he were going to box the Demon of play for his friend, and he let out good sense right and left, and, indeed, was almost betrayed into eloquence. “What!” he cried, “you, who are so bright and keen and knowing in everything else, are you really so blinded by egotism and credulity as to believe that you can invent any method of betting at _rouge et noir_ that has not been tried before you were born? Do you remember the first word in La Bruy'ere's famous work?” “No,” said Ned, sulkily. “Read nothing but newspapers.”