“The gamblers of our party were but three in number, and all firm of purpose not to exceed the small risk we had prescribed for ourselves of 125 francs each. I was the eldest and rashest of the three, my money being soonest gone, though not for two or three hours, and it was never for a moment doubtful but that I should be a loser in the end. My companions were both cooler and cannier in their play. They did not, like me, precipitately put down their money before the croupiers had raked up the stakes lost by the previous catastrophe. They did not stretch over other players so awkwardly as I did,—indeed, the croupiers had to rebuke me mildly, by begging me to use a rake; and then, when I did use the rake, I managed to knock the most desperate gambler in the room about the head with it, and draw forth a fierce remonstrance, which made me recall with uncomfortable vividness that there was a pistol-practising ground (‘Tir-au pistolet’) in the garden of the hotel, which would readily furnish the instruments for a meeting, wherein I should hardly have come off with a mere moral lesson. Indeed, I felt clear, after watching my companions,—one of them a shrewd counsel, learned in the law, the other a cool, sagacious Cantab, who came out high in the Tripos the other day,—that neither of them had the true gambling instinct as strongly as I, though so far as their experience went, it seemed to confirm my own. And what was that experience? This chiefly,—that I was distinctly conscious of partially attributing to some defect or stupidity in my own mind every venture on an issue that proved a failure; that I groped about within me for something in me like an anticipation or warning (which, of course, was not to be found) of what the next event was to be, and generally hit upon some vague impulse in my own mind which determined me; that whenever I succeeded, I raked up my gains with a half-impression that I had been a clever fellow, and had made a judicious stake, just as if I had really moved a skilful move at chess; and that when I failed, I thought to myself, ‘Ah, I knew all the time I was going wrong in selecting that number, and yet I was fool enough to stick to it,’ which, of course was a pure illusion, for all that I did really know was that the chance was even, or much more than even, against me. But this illusion followed me throughout. I had a sense of _deserving_ success when I succeeded, and of having failed through my own wilfulness, or wrong-headed caprice of choice, when I failed. When, as not unfrequently happened, I put a coin on the corner between four numbers, receiving eight times my stake if any of the four numbers turned up, I was conscious of an honest glow of self-applause. I could see the same flickering impressions around me.