It was in this frame of mind that Edouard sought the place mentioned by the chevalier; he entered and walked through several rooms, until at last he reached one where a number of gamblers were assembled around a roulette table. He felt the blood mount to his cheeks, and he tried to conceal his embarrassment and to assume the air of an habitué of the game. Chevalier Desfleurets spied him; he rose, and ran toward him, and forgot to prick his card, he was in such haste to receive the three thousand francs. Edouard at once paid his debt; the chevalier was delighted with his debtor’s promptitude, and he invited him to sit down for a moment beside him. Edouard hesitated; he looked uneasily about him, fearing to meet someone whom he knew. He did in fact see several business agents whom he had met with Dufresne, and some other persons who had come to his party. But they all seemed wholly engrossed by the green cloth, and paid no attention to him. The chevalier led him, he allowed himself to be led, and in a moment he was seated at the roulette table. Desfleurets took up his cards and began to prick again, after having inquired of a tall, lean man in a nut-colored coat, what numbers had come out. The tall man glanced angrily at him, coughed, spat, blew his nose, made a grimace, clenched his fists, and did not reply. “He is a crank,” said the chevalier to Edouard, in an undertone; “he pricks his card three hours before risking his five-franc piece, and he almost always waits too long. He was watching the red zero, and I will wager that it came out before he bet on it. That man will never know the way to gamble; he is too much of a coward!” Edouard looked on and listened with astonishment to what was taking place before him for the first time; for before his marriage he had never chosen to enter a gambling house, being prudent enough then to distrust his own weakness. It is only when one is certain not to yield to temptation, when one experiences for games of chance the horror which they should inspire in every sensible man, that one can safely enter a gambling hell. What a vast field for watching and studying the effects of that deplorable passion! The result of one’s reflections is melancholy, but it teaches a useful lesson, and a gambling house is the best place for a young man to correct himself of that fatal taste, if, instead of abandoning himself to the passion that leads him thither, he could examine coolly what is taking place about him.