THE RESULT

Meanwhile, Paul Landry had begun badly, and had had some ill turns of
luck; nevertheless, feeling that his fortune was about to change, he
raised the stakes.

"Does any one take him up?" asked Constantin Lenaeiff.

"I do," said De Prerolles, who had returned to the table.

And, seizing a pencil that lay on the card-table, he signed four cheques
of twenty-five thousand francs each. Unfortunately for him, the next
hand was disastrous. The stakes were increased, and the bank was broken
several times, when Paul Landry, profiting by a heavy gain, doubled and
redoubled the preceding stakes, and beheld mounting before him a pile of
cheques and counters.

But, as often happens in such circumstances, his opponent, Henri de
Prerolles, persisted in his vain battle against ill-luck, until at three
o'clock in the morning, controlling his shaken nerves and throwing down
his cards, without any apparent anger, he said:

"Will you tell me, gentlemen, how much I owe you?"

After all accounts had been reckoned, he saw that he had lost two hundred
and ninety thousand francs, of which two hundred and sixty thousand in
cheques belonged to Paul Landry, and the thirty thousand francs' balance
to the bank.