I therefore had no idea about pronunciation and I was afraid that people would laugh as soon as I opened my mouth.

It was this fear in particular that made me doubt whether to go to Montecarlo or not, but then I thought, I had left home with the intention of going as far as America, without any belongings and not knowing English or Spanish, not even enough to recognise either by sight. And so, using the little French I had, and with the guidance of the booklet, I decided to take that short trip to Montecarlo and risk it.

I told myself in the train:

“Neither my wife nor my mother-in-law knows I have this bit of money in my wallet. I’ll waste it here and remove all temptation. I hope I’ll have enough left to pay my return fare home, but if not …”

I had heard that there was no shortage of sturdy trees in the gardens around the gambling-casino. If it came to that, I could hang myself quite cheaply from one of them, using my trouser-belt. It would be quite stylish; people would say:

“Heaven knows how much he must have lost, poor fellow!”

I must admit, I expected something better. The entrance-hall was quite attractive. Clearly, the intention had been more or less to raise a temple to Fortune, with those eight marble columns. There was a large doorway and two side-doors. On these was written the word “Tirez”. I could manage that, and I also coped with “Poussez” on the large door, which obviously meant the opposite. So I pushed and went in.

It was in terribly bad taste and seemed deliberately insulting. They could at least offer the people who lose so much money there the satisfaction of being fleeced in a less ostentatious and more genuinely attractive place. All large cities now pride themselves on having a fine slaughterhouse for their unfortunate animals, even though, deprived of any form of education as they are, they can hardly be expected to appreciate it. Nevertheless, it is certainly true that most of the people who go to a casino have other things on their minds than noticing the style of decoration of the five rooms, just as the people sitting on the sofas are, it must be admitted, often in no condition to notice the dubious elegance of the upholstery.

Usually, the people seated there are poor wretches whose minds have been completely taken over by gambling. They sit there, studying the so-called statistical probabilities, and they seriously meditate on what moves to experiment with, working out a carefully structured set of tactics, based on their notes on the relationships between numbers. In short, they try to find some logic in chance, like looking for blood in a rock, and they are quite sure that one day, perhaps tomorrow, they will succeed. Still, one should never be surprised by anything.

“Ah, number 12, number 12!” a gentleman from Lugano was saying to me. He was a huge man and the sight of him inspired the most consoling reflections on the qualities of resistance of the human race.

“It is the king of numbers and it is my number! It never lets me down. It amuses itself of course, tries to spite me, quite often in fact, but eventually it makes up for it and repays me for my loyalty.” This huge man was in love with the number 12 and could speak of nothing else. He told me that the previous day, his special number had refused to come up at all, not once even, but he did not give up that easily: every game, stubbornly, he bet on 12. He was left on tenterhooks right up to the end, right up to the point when the croupiers announce:

“Messieurs, aux trois derniers!”

Out of these last three throws, on the first he got nothing. The second nothing; the third and last, there it was, 12.

“It spoke to me,” he declared, his eyes shining with pleasure, “it spoke!”

True, he had lost so much in the course of the day that only a few coins were left for that last bet, and so he was unable to make up the money lost; but what did it matter? The number 12 had spoken to him.

Hearing all this, a few verses that poor Pinzone had composed came to mind. His folder of puns and odd jingles had turned up when we moved house, and is now in the library. I recited this one to the gentleman:

“I was already weary of waiting on Fortune.

The capricious goddess had to pass my way

One day

She did at last,

But she was miserly.”

He took his head in his two hands and his face contorted for a while. I watched him, surprised at first, then concerned.

“What’s the matter?”

“Nothing. I’m laughing,” he replied. That was the way he laughed. His head hurt so much that he could not bear the shaking motion associated with laughter. So much for falling in love with number 12.

Before trying my luck, though quite without expectations, I decided to stay a while and watch, to work out how the game was played.