for no more than rain-drops in the ocean. All has been swept away, all has been made equal by sacrifice, suffering and death, in the one untarnished beauty. But let us not forget that it is almost the same with all men; and that these heroes were not of a different nature from the neighbour whom we are incessantly villifying. Death has purified and consecrated them; but we are all of us daily in the presence of the sacrifice, the suffering and, above all, the death which will purify and consecrate us in our turn. We are almost all subject to the same ordeals which, because they are less frequent and less glorious, appeal no less to the same profound virtues; and, if so many men, chosen at hazard from among us, have proved themselves worthy of our admiration, it is because, after all, we are doubtless better than we seem; for, while those others mingled in our life, even they did not appear to be much better than ourselves. OF GAMBLING X OF GAMBLING 1 _Paulo minora._ This essay, I need hardly say, consists of notes made before the war and put in order now, at a time when victory allows our thoughts to stray for a moment from the great tragedy in which the destinies of mankind have been at stake. For the rest, the subject, however frivolous it may at first sight appear, sometimes touches or seems to touch problems which it is not unfitting to examine, were it only to realize that they are perhaps illusive. Moreover it is unfortunately probable that, when peace is restored, our allies will visit in too numerous and confiding crowds the dubious havens of delight which we are about to enter. I have no pretension to serve them as a guide nor to teach them how to fight against the whims of fortune; but a handful of them may find in these lines, if not useful hints or profitable advice, at least some few reflections or observations which will pave the way for their own experiments or render them easier. 2 Let us then pay a last visit to one of those green tables which spread their length in the somewhat disreputable place of which I have written elsewhere[2] as the “Temple of Chance.” To-day I would rather call it the Factory of Chance, for it is here that, for more than half a century, without respite or repose, on weekdays, Sundays and holidays alike, daily from ten o’clock in the morning till twelve o’clock at night, with croupiers unintermittently relieving one another, men have obstinately manufactured Chance and doggedly consulted the formless and featureless god that shrouds good luck and ill within his shadow.