It was my fortune, two years ago, while drifting about the Continent, to be passing through the Riviera on my way to Greece, and, happening to spend a night at that very pretty place Monte Carlo, it was not unnatural that I went to take a look—no more—at the tables. After that it was easier of demonstration than the first proposition of Euclid that I laid a few francs on a half-dozen of numbers, and, oddly enough, I won. Just as the marble slowed down, though I was too intent on it to raise my eyes, I saw that a little stir of attentive movement was going about the room, and after receiving my stake with a studied negligence—the right pose, so I am told, at tables—I looked up. Close beside me was standing a very large lady, with four of the most magnificent ropes of pearls I have ever seen round her neck. She smiled affably, and with a most charming graciousness.

‘Please continue,’ she said; ‘you have yet time to stake on this roll.’

I at once guessed who this great jewelled lady was, and in some confusion of mind laid a napoleon at haphazard on the board.

The instant after the croupier set the wheel going, and I was struck with consternation, though not naturally superstitious, to observe that the number I had chosen to back was thirteen.

In the room there was dead silence, and looking up, I saw the Princess’s eyes glued to the table. This, as I soon observed, was a habit with that remarkable woman. The play of others she would watch as if her last franc was at stake; when she played herself, it was as if she staked a sixpence. Round and round went the marble, clicking and whirring; it slowed down, and I had won.

‘My dear young man,’ said the Princess, ‘I shall be delighted to know your name, and to receive you in my little private room to-night; I have a small party with me.’

I willingly made the Princess the present of my name, but regretted that circumstances over which I had no control made it absolutely impossible for me to play for the stakes she was accustomed to risk. She scarcely seemed to hear what I said.

‘Come,’ she said; ‘we will begin at once. I only want one extra to-night, as we are a houseful.’

Now, by nature I am a profound loyalist, and hold heads which are crowned, or have once been crowned, in a fervour of respect. To refuse to obey a royal command seemed to me a thing undreamed of, but to play with the Princess was dipped in an equal impossibility. As we entered the Princess’s room, again I explained the meanness of my position. She looked at me compassionately.

‘How much are you prepared to lose?’ she asked. ‘I mean, till you had lost what sum, would you have remained in the Casino?’

I told her the meagre total.

‘Well, come and lose it with me,’ she said, ‘instead of in there. My room is far more comfortable, and you may smoke, of course.’

Now I disapprove of gambling, especially for those who, like myself, cannot afford it. I had been caught, like Dr. Jekyll, tampering with my conscience, and Nemesis, in the person of the Princess, had come swift and stout. I resigned myself, I dare to hope, with a fair grace, and after the Princess had mentioned my name vaguely to a host of royalties, laying little stress on it, but much stress on the fact that she had seen me win on a single number, and that thirteen, we sat down. The situation reminded me of the ‘Rose and the Ring.’ The room was full of royalty, and my impression was that I was the only uncrowned head present. I felt myself the apotheosis of obscurity.

However, there was no help for it, and feeling that I had better curtail the evening as much as possible, but maintain the reputation of recklessness, I proceeded to stake on single numbers, or on two or three at a time, never backing more than six. Whether it was that the Goddess of Luck was fairly astounded by the sudden recantation of an apostate, or whether the powers that be wished to make up to me the missing of a train the day before, I do not know, but the fact remains that I simply could not lose. Pierre’s eyes were bright with admiration, and soon from handing me my stake with a ‘Monsieur,’ he gave me rank as ‘votre altesse.’

The clock by Vernier on the bracket seemed to me never to stop striking. Hardly had one hour died in the air than the next was on the chime. I was lost to the nimble passing of the time, and I remember but little of the next few hours, except that the heap of gold by me grew like Alice when she ate the mushroom. Hardly a word was exchanged by anyone, but I recollect, just as the clock struck twelve, looking at my hands. For the moment I thought I had an ague. I was sitting next the Princess, and she too observed them.

‘There, there!’ she said, as if soothing a child, ‘it may happen to any of us. Your face is all right. But send for a pair of gloves, if you have none with you. What is your size? A large eight, I should say. Pierre, procure some gloves—large eight—for this gentleman. Send one of my footmen. I often wear gloves myself, and I think I shall put them on now. I am a little excited. We are having a charming evening!’

One o’clock struck, and we adjourned for supper. As we rose I suddenly realized that the excitement had made me ravenous, though till then I had not been conscious of the slightest hunger. The experience, I believe, is a common one.

We supped in one of the restaurants in the Casino, and I was assailed with questions. Why had I not been seen here before? or was it that I played at other tables only? What was the largest sum I had ever won? and what did I really entre amis—(was not that gratifying!)—think about number thirteen? It was in vain that I pleaded I was no gambler, that I had no ideas whatever about the number thirteen, except that when thirteen sat down to dinner they usually all lived for more than a year afterwards. I was listened to with polite incredulity. I had not known that crowned heads were so slow of belief. Princess Sophia, I think, alone credited me with speaking the truth, for she said (and subsequently explained what she meant):

‘At first I thought that you were like poor Petros, when he said that he was but a beginner at bezique, but I think I was wrong.’

After an interval of half an hour we went back to the tables. If I had been lucky before, I was Luck incarnate now. The thing was absurd and ridiculous. I won so regularly that it became almost monotonous. For more than an hour I consistently played limit stakes, and still the rouleaux of gold poured in. I had recovered my nerve, and did not again put on the large eights, which fitted me exactly, and from opposite I saw the Princess looking at me with a wistful air.

‘It reminds me so of a night I spent with poor Leonard,’ she said, half to herself, as for the hundredth time her stake was swept away to join my winnings.

We left the tables at half-past three, and though I had meant to stop at Monte Carlo only one night more, I found it impossible to go. In fact, I engaged myself to lunch at the Princess’s villa next day, and be of her party again in the evening.

The details of the play during the next few evenings would be tedious to relate. It will suffice to say that Luck turned her back on me, and though she could not quite efface the result of her first favours, I am still not in a position to play roulette for large sums. In fact, I have only introduced this little episode to explain how it was that I became acquainted with the Princess, who told me the afore-written history of her life, and graciously suggested that I should make a little book of it.

‘For, indeed,’ she said, ‘my adventures seem to me not uninteresting. Perhaps that is only my egotism, but I do not think so. And as you are going away to-morrow—to Greece, I think you said?—I will finish the story of which I have told you a part, and mention what happened to Leonard after that memorable night at Monte Carlo when I gambled for RhodopÉ and lost.’

She sighed.

‘Poor dear Leonard!’ she said; ‘that was his tour de force, his fine moment. He never came near it again. It is sad to me to think what a mess people make of their lives. Some are born to one thing, some to another; he was certainly born to be a gambler, but an adverse fate, like the seventh godmother in the fairy-tales, gave him a terrible gift. She made him Prince of RhodopÉ, and endowed him with a mania for reformation. I call him Luther sometimes.’

‘But surely you can hardly regret what he has done!’ I said. ‘Has he not made a power of RhodopÉ?’

She shook her head sadly.

‘He has only done what any obstinate, stupid, and excellent man could have done,’ she said. ‘I will not argue that it is a better thing to be a gambler than a reformer, but when you are born a gambler, it is silly to devote your life to reforming. Sometimes, when I think of the parable of the ten talents, I wonder——’ She broke off. ‘Well, for my story,’ she said, after a pause. ‘It is very short—just the sequel of what I have already told you—but English people, I think, like a story to be finished up, and to know that the hero lives happily ever afterwards, and it will do for a little epilogue. In this case, it is certainly true that Leonard has lived happily ever afterwards, for, indeed, he is quite content. He has married, as you know, and he has five children, none of whom have ever a pack of cards, and they are all the pictures of health, and go to bed at nine. My dear young man, think what that means. It is horrible! The Education Department ought to see to it. But in RhodopÉ, unfortunately, I doubt whether even the Education Department know what cards are now. Dear me, how things have changed! Poor Leonard!

‘Yet he is content,’ she went on. ‘He has a magnificent army, and I really believe he will make a great power of RhodopÉ. When the Turkish Empire is broken up, you will see he will get a great slice. And the people adore him. They think he is the wisest, most Christian, and most enlightened of monarchs, and I am afraid that if Leonard lives long—and he is sure to live long, because he always goes to bed at half-past ten, and gets up at a quarter past seven—oh, that quarter past!—he may get to believe it, too. That would be a great pity. Humility is the first duty of a crowned head, and if the German Emp—— Well, I suppose I had better not say that.’

‘Please do,’ said I.

She shook her head.

‘No, you must not put that into your book. Say I stopped just in time; it will make people think how discreet I am, and, indeed, it is true. But to return to Leonard. He shut up every gambling-house in RhodopÉ; he even stopped knuckle-bones. As I told you, he had a bonfire of all the roulette-boards, and gradually he made RhodopÉ what it is. He has a passion for doing his duty—an acquired passion, I admit, but still a passion. It is a very common passion nowadays, and you English have got it worse than anyone. You are all too good, and in consequence, as a nation, you are just a little dull.’

‘I don’t think that is the result of our goodness,’ I said, for, like Stevenson, I hate cynicism like the devil.

‘Pardon me,’ said the Princess, with some asperity, ‘but I know it is. I like people to be good, when being good comes natural to them; but the continual effort to do one’s duty is paralyzing to other energies. You get developed incompletely. Also, the continual doing of one’s duty makes one all nose or all forehead, or something disproportionate. You have not time to be gay. Good gracious! there is the dressing-gong! I must go, so good-bye. I am sorry you cannot play with us to-night, but I think you said you were engaged. I have written to Leonard to say you will go to Amandos after your visit to Athens, and I have not told him you play roulette, or he would refuse to see you. Good-bye, and a prosperous voyage. If you should get away from your dinner early, you will find us at the tables, I expect. A little roulette would be pleasant, I think, for a change. The large eight gloves, which I see you have left on the table, I shall keep by me. When the madness is on me, and I want to stake on thirteen, they ought to bring me luck.’

THE END.

THE

NELSON LIBRARY OF COPYRIGHT NOVELS.

Uniform with this Volume and Same Price.

A Few Recent Volumes.

SIR GEORGE TRESSADY. Mrs. Humphry Ward. “Sir George Tressady” is Mrs. Humphry Ward’s best romance of high politics. It is a story of a young member who is gradually won to Democratic ideas by the influence of a great lady—the “Marcella” of the earlier novel. It is a powerful study of the development of a fine character. The last chapters must remain as of the finest episodes in modern fiction.

ROMANCE. Joseph Conrad and F. M. Hueffer. “Romance,” which Mr. Joseph Conrad wrote in collaboration with Mr. F. M. Hueffer, is a story of the Spanish Main, and of the strange adventures of the young Kentish gentlemen among the old Spanish cities of the West. The story does not belie its title, for the very soul of romance breathes in every chapter.

LADY ROSE’S DAUGHTER. Mrs. H. Ward. In this remarkable novel Mrs. Humphry Ward has worked the life story of the famous Mademoiselle de Lespinasse into a modern setting. It is a study of modern society and high politics, and against this glittering background we have a very original and charming love story.

WAR OF THE CAROLINAS. Meredith Nicholson.

Mr. Meredith Nicholson has acquired a great reputation in America by works like “The House of the Thousand Candles,” in which the threads of romance are woven into the fabric of everyday life. The present book is pure comedy. It is the story of two friends who find themselves, unknown to each other, assisting on opposite sides in a war between the two daughters of the Governors of the Carolinas.

KATHARINE FRENSHAM. Miss Beatrice Harraden.

Miss Harraden, many years ago, made her reputation by “Ships that Pass in the Night” as a delicate and subtle portrayer of human life and an accomplished artist in feminine psychology. Without any cheap emotional appeal she has an unequalled power of attracting the attention and winning the affections of her readers. “Katharine Frensham” is an admirable example of this gift, and all lovers of sincere and delicate art will welcome it.

FIRST MEN IN THE MOON. H. G. Wells.

This is a good example of Mr. Wells’s scientific romance at its best. It is a story of the first landing of mortals in the moon; of the strange land they found there, the strange government, and the strange people. It is a nightmare, but one without horror. Mr. Wells’s imagination has created out of wild shapes and figments a world which has got an uncanny reality of its own. The story grips the reader in the first chapter and carries him swiftly to the end.

PROFESSOR ON THE CASE. Jacques Futrelle.

Mr. Jacques Futrelle has attained in America, by his detective stories, something of the reputation of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle in this country. He has created a figure as original and wonderful as Sherlock Holmes. The Professor is a devotee of pure logic, and by acting on the principle that two and two always make four, is able to elucidate the most baffling mysteries.

LOVE AND THE SOUL HUNTERS. J. O. Hobbes.

The late Mrs. Craigie had a unique place among modern writers. She combined a brilliant wit and a remarkable gift of epigram with the mysticism of the spiritual life; a union of qualities of which we find traces in Disraeli’s best novels, and “Love and the Soul Hunters” is a typical example of her gifts.

SECRET OF THE LEAGUE. Ernest Bramah.

The publishers have much pleasure in presenting this brilliant novel in a cheap form in the hope that it may secure a wide popularity. It was first published some years ago under the title of “What Might Have Been,” but the author has since considerably revised and remodelled it. It is a study of the future of our politics under a Socialistic rÉgime. It tells how the middle and upper classes were crushed under a dead weight of taxation; how a great league was formed to combat the evil; and how victory was won by a device which is at once ingenious and convincing. In the French phrase it gives the reader furiously to think, and even those who differ from the author’s forecast will delight in the stirring narrative and the many passages of trenchant satire.

VALERIE UPTON. Miss A. D. Sedgwick.

This is a study of one type of the American young woman, who, with the phrases of self-sacrifice and idealism always upon her lips, is radically cold-hearted and selfish. It is a brilliant character study, and the repellent figure of the daughter is relieved by the gracious character of her mother—a character which is in many ways one of the most subtle and attractive in modern fiction.

FARM OF THE DAGGER. Eden Phillpotts.

Dartmoor is as much Mr. Phillpotts’s own country by right of conquest as the Scottish Borders were Sir Walter Scott’s, and Exmoor the late Mr. R. D. Blackmore’s. The present tale deals with the time of the American War and the early years of the nineteenth century. It is the study of a feud between neighbours; a grim story of passion, relieved by a charming love tale. The atmosphere of the moors is wonderfully rendered, and the men and women of the tale have borrowed from their environment a kind of spacious strength. It is also a record of action and adventure, and combines the merits of a novel of character with those of a fine romance.

EXPENSIVE MISS DU CANE. S. Macnaughtan.

This is a comedy of a country house in which a number of present-day types appear, drawn with admirable insight and a touch of kindly irony. There is tragedy in the tale, but tragedy of the kind common in our modern world, which is unspoken and scarcely realized. The heroine is singularly sympathetic and carefully studied, and no reader will be able to avoid the spell of her charm.

No. 5 JOHN STREET. Richard Whiteing.

This book, which first brought Mr. Whiteing into fame, is the most realistic and powerful of modern studies of slum life.

CLEMENTINA. A. E. W. Mason.

The story of the romantic love match of the Old Pretender, the father of Prince Charlie, and how the bride was stolen and carried to Italy by the inimitable Captain Wogan. Mr. Mason is the true successor of the late Mr. Seton Merriman, and no man living can tell a better tale.

THE AMERICAN PRISONER. Eden Phillpotts.

A story of the great war with Napoleon. The scene is laid mainly in Devon, and since “Lorna Doone” there has been no better picture of the West Country and its people.

JOHN CHARITY. H. A. Vachell.

A story of California in the old days of the Spanish dominion.

LADY AUDLEY’S SECRET. Miss Braddon.

Miss Braddon’s first, best, and most powerful story—a story that shares with “East Lynne” the distinction of being the most widely-read novel of modern times.

HIS HONOR AND A LADY. Sara J. Duncan.

A story of high Indian politics, in which the great public servant, who knows no master but his conscience, is contrasted with the time-server, who succeeds where he fails, and steps into his shoes. The character of the Lieutenant-Governor is one of the finest modern studies of the best type of British administrator.

THE MAN FROM AMERICA. Mrs. Henry de la Pasture.

This “sentimental comedy” tells of an old French vicomte who lives in Devon, of his grandchildren, and of how the “man from America,” the son of a former comrade, appears as a providence to save his fortunes. Mrs. De la Pasture has few rivals in the delineation of the little worries and tragedies of social life.

BY Mrs. HUMPHRY WARD.

MARCELLA.

At a time when Socialism is in the air, this novel should be read with keen interest. Marcella is a beautiful, high-spirited girl who leaves her own class to devote her life to the service of the poor.

THE MARRIAGE OF WILLIAM ASHE.

This book has been universally acknowledged to be one of the most brilliant of modern social studies. The characters are in the main drawn from real personages; and apart from the dramatic interest of the story, much light is shed on certain aspects of modern political life. Its place is with the books that do not die, and it is the most attractive and brilliant of all Mrs. Ward’s novels.

ROBERT ELSMERE.

The famous book which is the parent of all modern theological speculations. Comparable in sheer intellectual power to the best work of George Eliot, and unquestionably the most notable work of fiction that has been produced for years.

THE HISTORY OF DAVID GRIEVE.

OLD GORGON GRAHAM. G. H. Lorimer.

This is a pendant to the “Letters of a Self-Made Merchant,” which may be taken as the gospel of the American business man, and which has had an unprecedented success in the United States and in this country.

THE HOSTS OF THE LORD. Flora Annie Steel.

Mrs. Steel, after Mr. Rudyard Kipling, is the greatest novelist of India, and in this volume there is much of her best work. No writer has shown more vividly the contrast between the civilized life of the Anglo-Indian and the strange native world of ancient fears and famine around him.

MOONFLEET. J. Meade Falkner.

The dead Mohunes of Moonfleet, the smugglers who invade their vault, a secret cipher, and hidden treasure are amongst the ingredients of as spirited, fine-flavoured, and fascinating a tale as a man could wish to read.

WHITE FANG. Jack London.

The press says of “White Fang”:—“A masterpiece of its kind. It rivals, if it does not surpass, the most magical feats of Mr. Kipling’s genius.”—“A powerful and fascinating story.”—“A piece of work showing really amazing power.”

OWD BOB. Alfred Ollivant.

This is the saga of a dog, fully equal to Jack London’s “White Fang,” and unequalled since “Rab and His Friends.” It is “a fine open-air, blood-stirring book, to be enjoyed by all to whom a dog is dear.”

And many other equally interesting works of fiction.