So universal is this game in Rome, that the very beggars play away their earnings at it. It was only yesterday, as I came out of the gallery of the Capitol, that I saw two who had stopped screaming for "_baiocchi per amor di Dio_," to play pauls against each other at _Mora_. One, a cripple, supported himself against a column, and the other, with his ragged cloak slung on his shoulder, stood opposite him. They staked a paul each time with the utmost _nonchalance_, and played with an earnestness and rapidity which showed that they were old hands at it, while the coachmen from their boxes cracked their whips, and jeered and joked them, and the shabby circle around them cheered them on. I stopped to see the result, and found that the cripple won two successive games. But his cloaked antagonist bore his losses like a hero, and when all was over, he did his best with the strangers issuing from the Capitol to line his pockets for a new chance. Nothing is more simple and apparently easy than _Mora_, yet to play it well requires quickness of perception and readiness in the calculation of chances. As each player, of course, knows how many fingers he himself throws out, the main point is to guess the number of fingers thrown by his opponent, and to add the two instantaneously together. A player of skill will soon detect the favorite numbers of his antagonist, and it is curious to see how remarkably clever some of them are in divining, from the movement of the hand, the number to be thrown. The game is always played with great vivacity, the hands being flung out with vehemence, and the numbers shouted at the full pitch of the voice, so as to be heard at a considerable distance. It is from the sudden opening of the fingers, while the hands are in the air, that the old Roman phrase, _micare digitis_, "to flash with the fingers," is derived.