Jules Verne

“ She is a woman after all, and she loves best the men who can command her.”
“She has betrayed us all the same!”
“Bah! Merely caprice! And the caprice will pass, and she will smile on us!”
Toronthal made no reply. Did he even understand what Sarcany had said to him, while his eyes were fixed on the pages of his note-book and the useless combinations?
“What are you doing there?” asked Sarcany. “Tips? Diddles! Tut-tut. You are ill, Silas! You can't mix up mathematics and luck; it is luck alone we want to-day!”
“Be it so!” said Toronthal, shutting up his book. ”

“ Toronthal and Sarcany were the speakers. Since leaving Ragusa, in the short space of three months, they had reached the verge of ruin. After dissipating all that they had received as the reward of their abominable treachery, Sarcany had hunted his accomplice out of Ragusa, taking Sava with them, and then had enticed him into gambling and every dissipation in which he could squander his wealth. It is only just, however, to say that the old banker, daring speculator as he was, had in times gone by more than once risked his fortune in hazardous adventures in which luck was his only guide. ”

“ In France, in Italy, in Germany, in the great centers where chance keeps house in all its forms, on the exchange, on the race-course, in the clubs of the great capitals, in the watering-places as in the sea-side towns, Silas Toronthal had followed as Sarcany led, and had soon been reduced to a few hundred thousand francs. While the banker risked his own money, Sarcany risked the banker's, and down this double slope both went to ruin at double-quick time. What gamblers call the “deveine” had been dead against them, and it was not for want of trying every chance that offered. ”

“ Sometimes he revolted, but Sarcany had obtained an irresistible ascendency over him, and the wretched man fell so heavily that strength almost failed him to rise again, so that Sarcany was not at all uneasy about the occasional fancies that Toronthal had to withdraw from his influence. ”

“ In short, at the close of this evening, which would hereafter be celebrated in the annals of Monte Carlo, owing to their obstinacy in struggling against a series of seventeen rouges at trente-et-quarante, they had left off with less than 200,000 francs between them.
But if they were nearly ruined, they had not yet lost their senses, and while they were talking on the terrace they noticed a gambler who had become suddenly deranged, and who was running through the gardens shouting:
“It turns! It goes on turning!” ”

“ The two men as soon as they had left the beach went along by the edge of the rocks toward the railway station, and then went up the Avenue des Spelugues, which runs around the gardens of Monte Carlo.
Sarcany had seen nothing of this. His thoughts were far away from Monaco—at Tetuan. But he would not go there alone, he would compel his accomplice to go with him.
“Silas my master!” he repeated. “Silas able to checkmate me with a word! Never! If to-morrow the game does not give us back what it has taken away from us, 1 shall be obliged to make him follow me! Yes! ”

“ To follow me to Tetuan, and then on the coast of Morocco, if Silas Toronthal gives trouble, Silas Toronthal will disappear!”
As we know, Sarcany was not the man to recoil at one crime more, particularly when circumstances, the distance of the country, the wildness of the inhabitants, and the impossibility of seeking and finding the criminal, rendered its accomplishment so easy. ”

“ From La Condamine to Monte Carlo vehicles have to ascend a superb hill, at the upper end of which are the private houses and the hotels, in one of which were now staying Toronthal and Sarcany. From the windows of their apartment the view extended from La Condamine to beyond Monaco, and was only stopped by the Dog's Head, which seemed to be interrogating the Mediterranean as the Sphynx does the Lybian Desert. ”

“ And not only did they risk their money, but they enfeebled their intelligence by imagining absurd combinations, and they compromised their personal dignity by the familiarity which the frequenting of the very mixed assembly imposed upon all. ”