(68.) How wretched is manʼs estate, and how it makes one sick of life! We have to moil and toil, to watch, to yield, and to be dependent, to acquire a little money, or else we get it at the last gasp of our nearest relations. He who can master his feelings so far as not to wish for his fatherʼs death is an honest man. (69.) A person who expects to inherit something becomes over-polite; we are never better flattered, better obeyed, followed, courted, attended, and caressed than by those who hope to gain by our death, and wish it may happen soon. (70.) As far as different places, titles, and inheritances are concerned, all men look upon themselves as one anotherʼs heirs, and, therefore, quietly and stealthily wish all their lives for one anotherʼs death. The happiest man, under such circumstances, is he who has most to lose by his death, and most to leave to his successor. (71.) It is said of gambling that it makes all ranks equal; but there is often such a strange disparity and such a vast, immense, and profound chasm between this and that condition, that it pains us to see such extremes meet together.[307] It is like discord in music, like colours which do not harmonise, like words that clash and jar on our ears, like those sounds and noises which make us shudder. In a word, it is a subversion of all order and decency. If any one tells me gambling is the custom throughout the whole western hemisphere, I reply that perhaps it is one of the reasons why we are considered barbarians in another part of the globe, and what the Eastern nations who travel this way particularly remark of us in their journals. I have not the smallest doubt that such an excessive familiarity appears to them as disgusting as their _zombay_[308] and their other prostrations seem to us incongruous. (72.) An assembly of the provincial states or a parliament[309] meeting to discuss a very important matter of business, presents nothing so grave and serious as a table crowded with gamblers who play very high; a melancholic severity is depicted on every countenance; implacable towards one another, and irreconcilable enemies as long as they are together, they neither regard relationship, connections, birth, or social distinctions. Chance alone, that blind and stern divinity, presides over the assembly, and pronounces her opinions like a sovereign; people show their respect for her by remaining very silent, and by being more attentive than they are elsewhere. Every passion seems in abeyance for a while, to give way to one passion only, during which the courtier neither pretends to be gentle, fawning, polite, nor pious. (73.) Even the smallest trace of their former condition seems utterly obliterated in those who have made their fortune by gambling; they lose sight of their equals, and associate only with persons of the highest rank. It is true that the fortune of the die or _lansquenet_[310] often puts them in the same place whence it took them.[311]