Placards stuck up in all the rooms warned the gamblers that the play would not be suffered to extend a single minute beyond midnight, which was the hour specified by the law. The Salon or Cercle des Étrangers, still the most fashionable of the gambling-houses, which usually was opened only at eleven at night and closed at three or four in the morning, opened on Sunday evening at nine o'clock, a notification to such effect having been sent round to the habitual frequenters of the place. On Saturday and Sunday all the gambling-houses of Paris, especially No. 154 of the Palais Royal and Frascati's, were immensely crowded. Several dramatic incidents occurred. A workman destroyed himself on quitting No. 113, and two young men who had lost large sums disappeared entirely. In accordance with the edict previously announced, the game ceased exactly at midnight. The gambling during the last days of the tables had been very high, and crowds flocked to witness the end. Disturbances were anticipated, and the municipal guards were in consequence posted in considerable force about the various rooms. At Frascati's an immense crowd of visitors assembled, but they dispersed peaceably, after encountering the shouts and hisses of the mob that had collected in the Rue de Richelieu outside to witness their final exit from that historic haunt of pleasure. A dramatic incident occurred, one unhappy wretch shooting himself as the doors closed for ever. He had lost heavily, and was in despair at the prospect of being unable to retrieve his losses. In 1838 a case came on for trial before the Court of Assizes, Paris, which excited a good deal of interest. The prisoner, a clerk to a merchant, had gambled on several occasions, and had lost at Frascati's and the gaming-houses licensed by Government upwards of 100,000 francs, the property of his employer. In the course of the trial, Benazet, the lessee of these establishments, stated that in the course of a year there was thrown on the tables of the gaming-houses comprised in his licence 800,000,000 francs (£32,000,000): that, independently of the annual sum paid to Government for the licence (which was 6,000,000 francs or £240,000), the clear profit on the tables during the last year of their life, 1837, was no less a sum than 1,900,000 francs (£76,000), but that three-fourths of this sum was paid over to the city of Paris; the other fourth (£19,000) was his proportion of the gain. M. Benazet eventually declared that he would refund his part of the sum lost by the prosecutor's clerk if the city of Paris would equally pay back the three-fourths of it which had passed to its credit. The average number of gamblers admitted to those houses had been three thousand a day, another thousand having been denied entrance.