It did not seem at all as complicated as my booklet had implied.

The roulette wheel was set into the centre of the table, on the green, numbered baize. All around, the players, men, women, young and old, from all countries and all walks of life, some seated, some standing, nervously and hurriedly distributed large and small heaps of coins and banknotes over the yellow, numbered squares. Those who could not get near enough, or who did not want to, told the croupier the numbers and colours they wanted to play on, and the croupier immediately took his rake and placed their money according to directions, with the most amazing dexterity. There was silence, a strange, anxious silence, almost vibrant with restrained violence, broken now and again by the sleepy, monotonous voice of the croupiers:

“Messieurs, fakes vos jeux!”

Meanwhile, elsewhere at the tables, other, equally monotonous voices said:

“Le jeu est fait! Rien ne va plus!”

Finally, the croupier tossed the ball onto the roulette wheel and it whirred ….

All eyes rested on it with various expressions: anxiety, dread, anguish, fear. Some of those standing behind the people lucky enough to have found a seat, pushed others aside in order to glimpse their own bet, before the croupiers’ rakes would reach out and gather it in.

Eventually the ball stopped on a square, and the croupier repeated the normal formula in the usual tone and announced the number and colour that had come out.

I risked my first bet of a few coins on the table at the lefthand side of the first room, and I placed it at random, on 25. I too stayed to watch the treacherous ball, but I was smiling, owing to the effect of a strange tickling sensation in my stomach. The ball stopped on a square, and the croupier announced:

“Vingtcinq! Rouge, impair et passe!”

I had won! I stretched out my hand towards my slightly multiplied heap of money, when suddenly there was a gentleman He was very tall and had powerful shoulders, which were far too high compared with his small head. He wore gold spectacles on his snub-nose and his hair was receding on top, but long and smooth on his neck, and coloured between grey and blond like his goatee beard and his moustache. He pushed my hand away with not so much as a by-your-leave and took my money himself.

In my poor, halting French, I tried to point out to him that he had made a mistake, not deliberately of course. He was German and spoke even worse French than I did, but with the courage of a lion: he turned on me, assuring me that the mistake was in fact mine and the money his.

I looked around, astonished. No-one breathed a word, not even my neighbour, even thogh he had definitely seen me put my few coins on 25. I looked at the croupiers: they were motionless, impassive, like statues.

“I see,” I thought, and quietly picked up the other coins I had placed on the table and went away. “Now there’s a method for winning at roulette which is not mentioned in my booklet and possibly it’s the only reliable one after all.”

However, fortune, for whatever refined reasons of her own, decided solemnly to teach me that things were otherwise.

I approached another table where the gambling was in full swing and stayed there a long while, scrutinising the people sitting round it. For the most part, they were men in evening dress, but there were several ladies and quite a few struck me as somewhat dubious. There was one very blond little man, with large, blue, bloodshot eyes, fringed with long, almost white lashes. At first, he did not inspire much confidence. He was in evening clothes too, but it was obvious he was not used to wearing them. I decided to watch him in action. He gambled heavily; lost; was unruffled; gambled heavily again at the next round: fine, he would not covet my few coins. Although I really had been rooked at that first sitting, I was nevertheless ashamed of being so suspicious. There were so many people there throwing down gold and silver in fistfuls, fearlessly, as if it were sand, so why should I worry about my pittance?

Amongst all the others, I noticed a young man. He was short and his face was of a waxen pallor, with a large monocle fixed in his left eye. He affected an air of sleepy indifference, lounging casually in his seat, pulling out money from his trouser pocket and playing it at random on any number. Without even looking at the table, he sat tugging at the ends of his baby-fine moustaches, waiting for the wheel to stop. Then he asked his neighbour whether he had lost. I never saw him win once.

His neighbour was a thin, extremely elegant man of about forty. However, his neck was too long and slender and he was almost chinless, with lively little black eyes and beautiful, thick, raven-black hair, which stood up on his skull. He clearly enjoyed telling the youngster he had lost. He instead did win occasionally.

I sat down next to a fat gentleman, whose colouring was so dark that his eyesockets and lids looked smokey. He had rust-coloured, greying hair, but his curly, goatee beard was still almost completely black.