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The Gaming Table by Andrew Steinmetz

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THE RISE AND PROGRESS OF MODERN GAMING IN ENGLAND

CHAPTER VI. page 20


There are very many notabilities of the French Imperial Court,
who were then _fermiers des jeux_, or gambling house contractors;
and only a year or two since Doctor Louis Veron, ex-dealer in quack medicines,
ex-manager of the Grand Opera, and ex-proprietor of the
"Constitutionnel" newspaper, offered an enormous royalty to Government for the
privilege of establishing a gambling house in Paris. But the
Emperor Napoleon--all ex-member of Crockford's as he is--
sensibly declined the tempting bait. A similarly
"generous" offer was made last year to the Belgian Government
by a joint-stock company who wanted to establish public gaming
tables at the watering-places of Ostend, and who offered to
establish an hospital from their profits; but King Leopold, the
astute proprietor of Claremont, was as prudent as his Imperial
cousin of France, and refused to soil his hands with cogged dice.

The lease of the Paris authorized gaming houses expired in 1836-
7; and the municipality, albeit loath to lose the fat annual
revenue, was induced by governmental pressure not to renew it;
and it is asserted that from that moment the number of annual
suicides in Paris very sensibly decreased. "It is not generally
known," as the penny-a-liners say, "that the Rev. Caleb Colton,
a clergyman of the Church of England, and the author of
"Lacon," a book replete with aphoristic wisdom, blew his brains
out in the forest of St Germains, after ruinous losses at
Frascati's, at the corner of the Rue Richelieu and the
Boulevards, one of the most noted of the _Maisons des Jeux_, and
which was afterwards turned into a _restaurant_, and is now a
shawl-shop.[71]

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