of a stimulant acting upon my system when I was in a highly excited
state? Was my stomach in a particularly disordered condition? Or was the
champagne amazingly strong?

"Ex-brave of the French Army!" cried I, in a mad state of exhilaration,
"I am on fire! how are you? You have set me on fire. Do you hear, my
hero of Austerlitz? Let us have a third bottle of champagne to put the
flame out!"

The old soldier wagged his head, rolled his goggle-eyes, until I
expected to see them slip out of their sockets; placed his dirty
forefinger by the side of his broken nose; solemnly ejaculated "Coffee!"
and immediately ran off into an inner room.

The word pronounced by the eccentric veteran seemed to have a magical
effect on the rest of the company present. With one accord they all rose
to depart. Probably they had expected to profit by my intoxication; but
finding that my new friend was benevolently bent on preventing me from
getting dead drunk, had now abandoned all hope of thriving pleasantly on
my winnings. Whatever their motive might be, at any rate they went away
in a body. When the old soldier returned, and sat down again opposite to
me at the table, we had the room to ourselves. I could see the croupier,
in a sort of vestibule which opened out of it, eating his supper in
solitude. The silence was now deeper than ever.

A sudden change, too, had come over the "ex-brave". He assumed a
portentously solemn look; and when he spoke to me again, his speech was
ornamented by no oaths, enforced by no finger-snapping, enlivened by no
apostrophes or exclamations.