"Apparently, because I have misunderstood life," he replied in a bitter, ironical tone. "Because, instead of appearing on a sumptuously appointed stage, I appeared in an open-air theatre; because, instead of spending my time declaiming specious moral apothegms on the stage of society and playing heroic rôles, I amused myself by performing feats of strength and risking my life on a tight-rope, in order to give full play to the strength of my muscles. And even that comparison amounts to nothing: the tight-rope dancer has his vanity as well as the tragedian or the philanthropic orator. The gambler has none; he is neither admired nor applauded nor envied. His triumphs are so short-lived and so hazardous that it is hardly worth while to speak of them. On the other hand, society condemns him, the common herd despises him, especially on the days when he has lost. All his charlatanism consists in showing a bold front, in falling manfully before a group of selfish creatures who do not even look at him, they are so engrossed by their own mental struggles! If in his swift hours of good luck he finds some enjoyment in gratifying the commonplace vanities of luxury, it is a very brief tribute that he pays to human weaknesses. Ere long he will go and sacrifice remorselessly those childish joys of an instant to the devouring activity of his mind, to that infernal fever which does not permit him to live for one whole day as other men live. Vanity in him! Why, he has not the time for it, he has something else to do! Has he not his heart to torture, his brain to overturn, his blood to drink, his flesh to torment, his gold to lose, his life to endanger, to reconstruct, to pull down, to wrench, to tear in pieces, to risk altogether, to reconquer, bit by bit, to put in his purse, to toss on the table every moment? Ask the sailor if he can live on shore, the bird if he can do without his wings, man's heart if it can do without emotions. The gambler then is not criminal in himself; it is always his social position that makes him so, his family, whom he ruins or dishonors. But suppose him to be like me, alone in the world, without attachments, without kindred near enough in degree to be taken into account, free, thrown on his own resources, satiated or deceived in love, as I have so often been, and you will pity his error, you will regret for his sake that he was born with a sanguine and vain rather than with a bilious and reserved temperament. How do you argue that the gambler is in the same category as brigands and filibusters? Ask governments why they derive a part of their revenues from such a shameful source? They alone are guilty of offering those terrible temptations to restlessness, those deplorable resources to despair. But although love of gambling is not in itself so degrading as the majority of other passions, it is the most dangerous of all, the keenest, the most irresistible, and attended by the most wretched consequences. It is