The gaming at Aix-la-Chapelle is equally desperate and destructive. 'A Russian officer of my acquaintance,' says a writer in the Annual Register for 1818, 'was subject, like many of his countrymen whom I have known, to the infatuation of play to a most ridiculous excess. His distrust of himself under the assailments which he anticipated at a place like Aix-la-Chapelle, had induced him to take the prudent precaution of paying in advance at his hotel for his board and lodging, and at the bathing-house for his baths, for the time he intended to stay. The remaining contents of his purse he thought fairly his own; and he went of course to the table all the gayer for the license he had taken of his conscience. On fortune showing him a few favours, he came to me in high spirits, with a purse full of Napoleons, and a resolute determination to keep them by venturing no more; but a gamester can no more be stationary than the tide of a river, and on the evening he was put out of suspense by having not a Napoleon left, and nothing to console but congratulation on his foresight, and the excellent supper which was the fruit of it.' Towards the end of the last century Aix-la-Chapelle was a great rendezvous of gamblers. The chief banker there paid a thousand louis per annum for his license. A little Italian adventurer once went to the place with only a few louis in his pocket, and played crown stakes at Hazard. Fortune smiled on him; he increased his stakes progressively; in twenty-four hours won about L4000. On the following day he stripped the bank entirely, pocketing nearly L10,000. He continued to play for some days, till he was at last reduced to a single louis! He now obtained from a friend the loan of L30, and once more resumed his station at the gaming table, which he once more quitted with L10,000 in his pocket, and resolved to leave it for ever. The arguments of one of the bankers, however, who followed him to his inn, soon prevailed over his resolution, and on his return to the gaming table he was stripped of his last farthing. He went to his lodgings, sold his clothes, and by that means again appeared at his old haunt, for the half-crown stakes, by which he honourably repaid his loan of L30. His end was unknown to the relater of the anecdote, but 'ten to one,' it was ruin. At the same place, in the year 1793, the heir-apparent of an Irish Marquis lost at various times nearly L20,000 at a billiard table, partly owing to his antagonist being an excellent calculator, as well as a superior player.