The Gaming Table: Its Votaries and Victims (Vol.I&II). Andrew Steinmetz
Sala in his interesting work, already quoted, furnishes the completest account of Hombourg, its Kursaal, and gambling, which I have condensed as follows:—
'In Hombourg the Kursaal is everything, and the town nothing. The extortionate hotel-keepers, the "snub-nosed rogues of counter and till," who overcharge you in the shops, make their egregious profits from the Kursaal. The major part of the Landgrave's revenue is derived from the Kursaal; he draws £5000 a year from it. He and his house are sold to the Kursaal; and the Board of Directors of the Kursaal are the real sovereigns and land-graves of Hesse Hombourg. They have metamorphosed a miserable mid-German townlet into a city of palaces. Their stuccoed and frescoed palace is five hundred times handsomer than the mouldy old Schloss, built by William with the silver leg. They have planted the gardens; they have imported the orange-trees; they have laid out the park, and enclosed the hunting-grounds; they board, lodge, wash, and tax the inhabitants; and I may say, without the slightest attempt at punning, that the citizens are all Kursed.
'In the Kursaal is the ball or concert-room, at either end of which is a gallery, supported by pillars of composition marble. The floors are inlaid, and immense mirrors in sumptuous frames hang on the walls. Vice can see her own image all over the establishment. The ceiling is superbly decorated with bas-reliefs in carton-pierre, like those in Mr. Barry's new Covent Garden Theatre; and fresco paintings, executed by Viotti, of Milan, and Conti, of Munich; whilst the whole is lighted up by enormous and gorgeous chandeliers. The apartment to the right is called the Salle Japanese, and is used as a dining-room for a monster table d'hote, held twice a day, and served by the famous Chevet of Paris.
'There is a huge Cafe Olympique, for smoking and imbibing purposes, private cabinets for parties, the monster saloon, and two smaller ones, where FROM ELEVEN IN THE FORENOON TO ELEVEN AT NIGHT, SUNDAYS NOT EXCEPTED, ALL THE YEAR ROUND, and year after year—(the "administration" have yet a "jouissance" of eighty-five years to run out, guaranteed by the incoming dynasty of Hesse Darmstadt), knaves and fools, from almost every corner of the world, gamble at the ingenious and amusing games of Roulette, and Rouge et Noir, otherwise Trente et Quarante.
'There is one table covered with green baize, tightly stretched as on a billiard-field. In the midst of the table there is a circular pit, coved inwards, but not bottomless, and containing the Roulette wheel, a revolving disc, turning with an accurate momentum on a brass pillar, and divided at its outer edge into thirty-seven narrow and shallow pigeon-hole compartments, coloured alternately red and black, and numbered—not consecutively—up to thirty-six. The last is a blank, and stands for Zero, number Nothing. Round the upper edge, too, run a series of little brass hoops, or bridges, to cause the ball to hop and skip, and not at once into the nearest compartment. This is the regimen of Roulette. The banker sits before the wheel—a croupier, or payer-out of winnings to and raker in of losses from the players, on either side. Crying in a voice calmly sonorous, "Faites le Jeu, Messieurs,"—"Make your game, gentlemen!" the banker gives the wheel a dexterous twirl, and ere it has made one revolution, casts into its Maelstrom of black and red an ivory ball. The interval between this and the ball finding a home is one of breathless anxiety. Stakes are eagerly laid; but at a certain period of the revolution the banker calls out—"Le Jeu est fait. Rien ne va plus,"—and after that intimation it is useless to lay down money. Then the banker, in the same calm and impassable voice, declares the result. It may run thus:—"Vingt-neuf, Noir, Impair, et Passe," "Twenty-nine, Black, Odd, and Pass the Rubicon" (No. 18); or, "Huit, Rouge, Pair, et Manque," "Eight, Red, Even, and NOT Pass the Rubicon."
'Now, on either side of the wheel, and extending to the extremity of the table, run, in duplicate, the schedule of mises or stakes. The green baize first offers just thirty-six square compartments, marked out by yellow threads woven in the fabric itself, and bearing thirty-six consecutive numbers. If you place a florin (one and eight-pence)—and no lower stake is permitted—or ten florins, or a Napoleon, or an English five-pound note, or any sum of money not exceeding the maximum, whose multiple is the highest stake which the bank, if it loses, can be made to pay, in the midst of compartment 29, and if the banker, in that calm voice of his, has declared that 29 has become the resting place of the ball, the croupier will push towards you with his rake exactly thirty-three times the amount of your stake, whatever it might have been. You must bear in mind, however, that the bank's loss on a single stake is limited to eight thousand francs. Moreover, if you have placed another sum of money in the compartment inscribed, in legible yellow colours, "Impair," or Odd, you will receive the equivalent to your stake—twenty-nine being an odd number. If you have placed a coin on Passe, you will also receive this additional equivalent to your stake, twenty-nine being "Past the Rubicon," or middle of the table of numbers—18. Again, if you have ventured your money in a compartment bearing for device a lozenge in outline, which represents black, and twenty-nine being a black number, you will again pocket a double stake, that is, one in addition to your original venture. More, and more still—if you have risked money on the columns—that is, betted on the number turning up corresponding with some number in one of the columns of the tabular schedule, and have selected the right column—you have your own stake and two others;—if you have betted on either of these three eventualities, douze premier, douze milieu, or douze dernier, otherwise "first dozen," "middle dozen," or "last dozen," as one to twelve, thirteen to twenty-four, twenty-five to thirty-six, all inclusive, and have chanced to select douze dernier, the division in which No. 29 occurs, you also obtain a treble stake, namely, your own and two more which the bank pays you, your florin or your five-pound note—benign fact!—metamorphosed into three. But, woe to the wight who should have ventured on the number "eight," on the red colour (compartment with a crimson lozenge), on "even," and on "not past the Rubicon;" for twenty-nine does not comply with any one of these conditions. He loses, and his money is coolly swept away from him by the croupier's rake. With reference to the last chances I enumerated in the last paragraph, I should mention that the number EIGHT would lie in the second column—there being three columns—and in the first dozen numbers.
'There are more chances, or rather subdivisions of chances, to entice the player to back the "numbers;" for these the stations of the ball are as capricious as womankind; and it is, of course, extremely rare that a player will fix upon the particular number that happens to turn up. But he may place a piece of money a cheval, or astride, on the line which divides two numbers, in which case (either of the numbers turning up) he receives sixteen times his stake. He may place it on the cross lines that divide four numbers, and, if either of the four wins, he will receive eight times the amount of his stake. A word as to Zero. Zero is designated by the compartment close to the wheel's diameter, and zero, or blank, will turn up, on an average, about once in seventy times. If you have placed money in zero, and the ball seeks that haven, you will receive thirty-three times your stake.'
The twin or elder brother of Roulette, played at Hombourg, Rouge et Noir, or Trente et Quarante, is thus described by Mr. Sala:—
'There is the ordinary green-cloth covered table, with its brilliant down-coming lights. In the centre sits the banker, gold and silver in piles and rouleaux, and bank-notes before him. On either hand, the croupier, as before, now wielding the rakes and plying them to bring in the money, now balancing them, now shouldering them, as soldiers do their muskets, half-pay officers their canes, and dandies their silk umbrellas. The banker's cards are, as throughout all the Rhenish gaming-places, of French design; the same that were invented, or, at least, first used in Europe, for crazy Charles the Simple. These cards are placed on an inclined plane of marble, called a talon.
'The dealer first takes six packs of cards, shuffles them, and distributes them in various parcels to the various punters or players round the table, to shuffle and mix. He then finally shuffles them, and takes and places the end cards into various parts of the three hundred and twelve cards, until he meets with a court card, which he must place upright at the end. This done, he presents the pack to one of the players to cut, who places the pictured card where the dealer separates the pack, and that part of the pack beyond the pictured card he places at the end nearest him, leaving the pictured card at the bottom of the pack.
'The dealer then takes a certain number of cards, about as many as