There was no woman present, and the general appearance of the room and the occupation of its inmates might have led to the supposition that it existed for the sole purpose of gambling. Nevertheless, it was really an apartment in a private house, and, as such, it testified merely to the Comte de Larny’s method of entertaining his friends. Were the monarchy going swiftly to perdition, and its supporters involved in the same downfall, the latter must amuse themselves; and if the host and every one of his guests knew that each card-party might be his last, the knowledge apparently added zest to the game. The gathering numbered scarcely a score. Amongst it were visible a few black figures, those of the _noirs_, the _aristocrates enragés_, who affected to wear mourning for the monarchy which they considered—and very truly—to have breathed its last when its holder was brought from Versailles. The greater number, however, wore a less sombre style of dress, and several were in uniform. This was, like Coblentz, the camp of ultra-Royalism, the last stronghold of a loyalty pushed to the point of fanaticism, where the champions of a lost cause brought to its defence a zeal far more ardent than their leader’s own. Leader, indeed, the King was not; his name served as a rallying-cry, his person as a symbol, but the passive and patient Louis XVI. was neither chief nor divinity to these his most fervent partisans. They were all of them very literally _plus royalistes que le roi_. For them the King was almost a traitor to himself. He had stripped himself of what he had no right to lay aside, but above him still burnt the throne from which he had been dragged, and it was on the steps of that desecrated altar that their lives were offered up. They were many of them young, and most of them doomed; they were gay with a gaiety which was spontaneous if it was extravagant, and brave with a courage no less real for its utter futility. And if the stake for which they played was the existence and the privileges of their own order as well as those of their King, if they sometimes condemned the sovereign in whose name they held the dice, if they cast the last throws with defiant recklessness, theirs was none the less a tragic and a desperate devotion. But certainly none of the company seemed in the slightest degree conscious of this. They talked, they laughed, they lost or won; and the Comte de Larny, who prided himself on his personal resemblance to the King, went round the room at intervals, exchanging a jest with the talkers and bestowing an occasional word of advice on a player if he overlooked his cards.