The company to be seen round the table consists usually of Russians and French, both male and female, with a sprinkling of Germans, who escape from their own police in order to satisfy their itching for play. Thus, for instance, we have Nassau and Darmstadt people at Baden-Baden, while the Badese and Suabese rush to Homburg and Wisbaden. There is a very salutary law in every land where gambling is permitted, that no inhabitant of that land be allowed to play at the public table, and if any one is caught red-handed, he is usually imprisoned, and his winnings, if any, confiscated. We can call to mind a laughable instance of this at Wisbaden. Two old peasants, who had probably come for a day's pleasure and to see the sights, managed to find their way into the Kursaal, and stood all entranced before the roulette-table. One of them, imagining it a right royal way of making money, and much better fun than ploughing, lugged out his leathern purse, and began by staking a modest florin on the rouge. In the course of about half an hour he had contrived to win a very decent sum, and was walking away in great glee, when a gendarme, who had been watching him all the while, quietly collared him and dragged him off to the Polizei, where, as we afterwards learned, he was incarcerated for three weeks, and his "addlings" employed for the good of the state. It may naturally be supposed that the presence of so much circulating medium in one place, and the _prestige_ attaching to the banquier's coffers, which are currently supposed to contain a sum More precious far Than that accumulated store of wealth And orient gems, which, for a day of need, The sultan hides in his ancestral tombs,