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Volume I Volume II

The Gaming Table by Andrew Steinmetz

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GAMBLING IN FRANCE IN ALL TIMES

CHAPTER V. page 4

The invention of cards brought about some change in the mode of
amusement. The various games of this kind, however, cost more
time than money; but still the thing attracted the attention of
the magistrates and the clergy. An Augustinian friar, in the
reign of Charles VII., effected a wonderful reformation in the
matter by his preaching. At his voice the people lit fires in
several quarters of the city, and eagerly flung into them their
cards and billiard-balls.[42]

[42] Pasquier, _Recherche des Recherches_.

With the exception of a few transient follies, nothing like a
rage for gambling can be detected at that period among the lower
ranks and the middle classes. The vice, however, continued to
prevail without abatement in the palaces of kings and the
mansions of the great.

It is impossible not to remark, in the history of nations, that
delicacy and good faith decline in proportion to the spread
of gambling. However select may be the society of gamesters, it
is seldom that it is exempt from all baseness. We have seen a
proof of the practice of cheating among the Hindoos. It existed
also among the Romans, as proved by the `cogged' or loaded dice
dug up at Herculaneum. The fact is that cheating is a natural,
if not a necessary, incident of gambling. It may be inferred
from a passage in the old French poet before quoted, that cheats,
during the reign of Charles VI., were punished with
`bonnetting,'[43] but no instance of the kind is on record; on
the contrary, it is certain that many of the French kings
patronized and applauded well-known cheats at the gaming table.

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