Among the vices generated by gaming, that of swearing is especially noted by most authors who have written on the subject.[345] The French appear to have minced and frittered their oaths, swearing "like a comfit-maker's wife;" the English and Germans to have sworn grossly; and the Spaniards and Italians to have blasphemed in a spirit of refined impiety. Pascasius Justus, in this respect, calls the gaming-table the devil's farm, and says that it always yields him a most abundant crop. In his time, gamesters do not appear to have merely sworn from vexation, but even to have delighted in pouring forth a volley of oaths. He relates that, when he once told a gambler that he himself could never utter an oath, the other replied, "Then you are ignorant of a great pleasure." A French writer, speaking of the oaths of the Spaniards, gives the following anecdote, as an instance of their impiety. On one occasion, when an order had been issued to the Spanish army against swearing, a soldier having lost all his money at cards, and not daring to violate the letter of the order, gave vent to his feelings by exclaiming, "Beso las manos, Señor Pilato," "I thank you, Mr. Pontius Pilate."--"Il devoit être brûlé," is the judgment of the relater. A similar instance of blasphemy, on the part of an Italian who had lost his money at cards, is recorded by Henry Stephens, in the introduction to his 'Traité de la Conformité des Merveilles anciennes avec les modernes.'[346] With respect to the passions excited by gaming, the learned and pious Jeremy Collier expresses his opinion in the following manner, in his 'Essay on Gaming,' in a Dialogue: "I can't help observing that playing deep sets the spirits on float, strikes the mind strongly into the face, and discovers a man's weakness very remarkably. Cards and dice, &c. command the humour no less than the moon does the tide; you may see the passions come up with the dice, and ebb and flow with the fortune of the game; what alternate returns of hope and fear, of pleasure and regret, are frequently visible upon such occasions? Ενθα δ' ἁμ' οιμωγη τε και ευχωλη πελεν ανδρων, Ολλυντων τε, και ολλυμενων. "As you say gaming is an image of war, the sudden turns of success are easily discernible; the advances of victory or ill luck, make a strange revolution in the blood. The countenance takes its tincture from the chance, and appears in the colours of the prospect. With what anxiousness is the issue expected. You would think a jury of life and death was gone out upon them. The sentence for execution is not receiv'd with more concern, than the unlucky appearance of a cast or a card. Thus some people are miserably ruffled, and thrown off the hinges; they seem distress'd to an agony; you'd pity them for the meanness of their behaviour; others are no less foolishly pleas'd; break out with childish satisfaction, and bring the covetousness of their humour too much into view.