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Volume I Volume II

The Gaming Table by Andrew Steinmetz

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THE UNIVERSAL PASSION OF GAMING OR, GAMING ALL THE WORLD OVER

CHAPTER I. page 6

There can be no doubt that the spirit of gaming went on acquiring
new strength and development throughout every subsequent reign in
France; and we shall see that under the Empire the thing was a
great national institution, and made to put a great deal of money
as `revenue' into the hands of Fouche.

But the Spaniards have always been, of all nations, the most
addicted to gambling. A traveller says:--`I have wandered
through all parts of Spain, and though in many places I have
scarcely been able to procure a glass of wine, or a bit of bread,
or any of the first conveniences of life, yet I never went
through a village so mean and out of the way, in which I could
not have purchased a pack of cards.' This was in the middle of
the seventeenth century, but I have no doubt it is true at the
present moment.

If we can believe Voltaire, the Spaniards were formerly very
generous in their gaming. `The grandees of Spain,' he says, `had
a generous ostentation; this was to divide the money won at
play among all the bystanders, of whatever condition.

Montrefor relates that when the Duke of Lerma, the Spanish
minister, entertained Gaston, brother of Louis XIII., with all
his retinue in the Netherlands, he displayed a magnificence of an
extraordinary kind. The prime minister, with whom Gaston spent
several days, used to put two thousand louis d'ors on a large
gaming-table after dinner. With this money Gaston's attendants
and even the prince himself sat down to play. It is probable,
however, that Voltaire extended a single instance or two into a
general habit or custom. That writer always preferred to deal
with the splendid and the marvellous rather than with plain
matter of fact.

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