'Now, on either side of the wheel, and extending to the extremity of the table, run, in duplicate, the schedule of _mises_ or stakes. The green baize first offers just thirty-six square compartments, marked out by yellow threads woven in the fabric itself, and bearing thirty-six consecutive numbers. If you place a florin (one and eight-pence)--and no lower stake is permitted--or ten florins, or a Napoleon, or an English five-pound note, or any sum of money not exceeding the maximum, whose multiple is the highest stake which the bank, if it loses, can be made to pay, in the midst of compartment 29, and if the banker, in that calm voice of his, has declared that 29 has become the resting place of the ball, the croupier will push towards you with his rake exactly thirty-three times the amount of your stake, whatever it might have been. You must bear in mind, however, that the bank's loss on a single stake is limited to eight thousand francs. Moreover, if you have placed another sum of money in the compartment inscribed, in legible yellow colours, "_Impair_," or Odd, you will receive the equivalent to your stake--twenty-nine being an odd number. If you have placed a coin on _Passe_, you will also receive this additional equivalent to your stake, twenty-nine being "Past the Rubicon," or middle of the table of numbers--18. Again, if you have ventured your money in a compartment bearing for device a lozenge in outline, which represents black, and twenty-nine being a black number, you will again pocket a double stake, that is, one in addition to your original venture. More, and more still,--if you have risked money on the columns--that is, betted on the number turning up corresponding with some number in one of the columns of the tabular schedule, and have selected the right column--you have your own stake and two others;--if you have betted on either of these three eventualities, _douze premier, douze milieu_, or _douze dernier_, otherwise "first dozen," "middle dozen," or "last dozen," as one to twelve, thirteen to twenty-four, twenty-five to thirty-six, all inclusive, and have chanced to select _douze dernier_, the division in which No. 29 occurs, you also obtain a treble stake, namely, your own and two more which the bank pays you, your florin or your five-pound note--benign fact!--metamorphosed into three. But, woe to the wight who should have ventured on the number "eight," on the red colour (compartment with a crimson lozenge), on "even," and on "not past the Rubicon;" for twenty-nine does not comply with any one of these conditions. He loses, and his money is coolly swept away from him by the croupier's rake. With reference to the last chances I enumerated in the last paragraph, I should mention that the number _EIGHT_ would lie in the second column--there being three columns,--and in the first dozen numbers.