[Dark Saint Alaick]

"St. Germain reflected.

"'I could advance you the sum you want,' said he; 'but I know that you
would not rest easy until you had paid me back, and I should not like
to bring fresh troubles upon you. But there is another way of getting
out of your difficulty: you can win back your money.'

"'But, my dear Count,' replied my grandmother, 'I tell you that I
haven't any money left.'

"'Money is not necessary,' replied St. Germain: 'be pleased to listen
to me.'

"Then he revealed to her a secret, for which each of us would give a
good deal..."

The young officers listened with increased attention. Tomsky lit his
pipe, puffed away for a moment and then continued:

"That same evening my grandmother went to Versailles to the _jeu de la
reine_. The Duke of Orleans kept the bank; my grandmother excused
herself in an off-hand manner for not having yet paid her debt, by
inventing some little story, and then began to play against him. She
chose three cards and played them one after the other: all three won
_sonika_, [Said of a card when it wins or loses in the quickest
possible time.] and my grandmother recovered every farthing that she
had lost."

"Mere chance!" said one of the guests.

"A tale!" observed Hermann.

"Perhaps they were marked cards!" said a third.

"I do not think so," replied Tomsky gravely.

"What!" said Narumov, "you have a grandmother who knows how to hit
upon three lucky cards in succession, and you have never yet succeeded
in getting the secret of it out of her?"

"That's the deuce of it!" replied Tomsky: "she had four sons, one of
whom was my father; all four were determined gamblers, and yet not to
one of them did she ever reveal her secret, although it would not have
been a bad thing either for them or for me. But this is what I heard
from my uncle, Count Ivan Ilyich, and he assured me, on his honour,
that it was true. The late Chaplitzky--the same who died in poverty
after having squandered millions--once lost, in his youth, about three
hundred thousand roubles--to Zorich, if I remember rightly. He was in
despair. My grandmother, who was always very severe upon the
extravagance of young men, took pity, however, upon Chaplitzky. She
gave him three cards, telling him to play them one after the other, at
the same time exacting from him a solemn promise that he would never
play at cards again as long as he lived. Chaplitzky then went to his
victorious opponent, and they began a fresh game. On the first card he
staked fifty thousand rubles and won _sonika_; he doubled the stake
and won again, till at last, by pursuing the same tactics, he won back
more than he had lost ...

"But it is time to go to bed: it is a quarter to six already."

And indeed it was already beginning to dawn: the young men emptied
their glasses and then took leave of each other.