Several patrician sons were to be found amongst the gentlemen, who rather prided themselves upon trying their luck at the gaming table, and having discovered a miniature Homburg and Baden-Baden in the city of pure reason, at which were not wanting the Graces, who rustled their silks through the state rooms and along the terraces. A Russian prince, possessor of many serfs, was very impatient at the pause in the game, and walked angrily up and down, caring as little about the seductive beauties as if they had been painted in faded colours upon the walls. The play began afresh; the roulette ball commenced its fatal course; people betted upon _rouge_ and _noir_ upon _pair_ and _impair_, here and there also considerable sums were placed upon single numbers, which Baluzzi swept off with great satisfaction. The little gaming table was arranged exactly after the pattern of the larger Rhenish banks, and here, despite the small dimensions, sums could be lost which were not at all proportionate to those dimensions. The young merchant sons rejoiced over the losses, as much as over their gains, because they could thus show that it mattered not at all to them how they sacrificed vast sums, the loss of which would have reduced others to a state of nervous agitation. Most eager was the Pole; he belonged to those persons who have converted hazard into a system, and who lose themselves in deep calculations as to the chances of the game; he sat with a little writing tablet in his hand, and carefully noted the occurrences at the green board, laughed at by the free thinkers of the gaming table, who believe in chance only, just as others perceive but a game of hazard in the great comedy of the world, and ridicule the thinkers who strive to reduce it into a system. The mother and her flaxen-haired daughter also played devotedly, although they merely pledged small sums; at each gain or loss, a red streak suffused the yellow-bronzed complexion of the mother, and the waxen features of the daughter received a sudden crimson glow, which vanished again just as quickly. Despite all absorption in the hieroglyphics of chance, Mierowski had leisure sufficient to observe Beate's mode of playing, which in its thoughtless recklessness pierced his heart. Owing to the lively interest which he felt in the dainty Italian, he could no longer look calmly on; he rose from the table, and whispered the necessary hints to her, not omitting to squeeze her hand in token of his friendship. Beate followed these hints, and lost bravely, an event which seemed to confuse all rules of the gambling method. He was all the more eagerly bent upon proving the truth of his calculations by means of his own success.