THE LOUIS-D'OR.

Press, Volume LII, Issue 9124, 7 June 1895, Page 3

THE LOUIS-DOR.

By Fraxcois Coppee. When Lucien de Hem saw his last bill for a hundred francs clawed by the banker's rake, when he rose from roulettetable where he had just lost the debris o his little fortune, scraped together for this supreme battle, he experienced aomethiug like vertigo, and thought that he should fall. His brain was muddled; his legs were limp and trembling. He threw himself upon the leather lounge that circumscribed the gambling-table. For a few moment, he mechanically followed the clandestine proceedings of that Paris hell in which he hs.d sullied the best years of his youth, recognised the worn profiles of the gamblers under the merciless glare of the three great shadeless lamps, listened to the clicking ana the sliding of the gold over the felt, and realised that he Avas bankrupt. Then, overcame by exh .uation, he sank in a heavy sleep. When he awofee the hands on the dial pointed exactly to a quarter to 12.

As he rose and stretched his arms it occurred to him that it was Christmas Eve, and by one of those ironical freaks of the memory he felt as though he were once more a child, ready to stand his little boot on the hearth before goiug to bed. Just then old Dronski, one of the pillars of the trade, the traditional Pole, wrapped in the greasy worn cloak adorned with frogs and pasaementene, came up to Lucien muttering something behind his dirty, greyish beard. " Lend mc five francs, will you, Monsieur? I haven't stirred from this place for two days, and for two whole days seventeen hasn't come out once. You may laugh at mc all you like, but I'll bet you my fist that when the clock strikes twelve seventeen will be the winning number."

Lucien de Hem shruggad his shoulders ; and, fumbling through his pockets, he found that he had not even money enough to comply with that feature of gambling etiquette known among the frequenters of the establishment as " the Pole's hundred cents." He passed into the ante-chamber, put on his hat and cloak, and disappeared down the narrow stairway with the agility of a man who has a fever. During the four hours which Lucien had spent in the den it had snowed heavily, and the street, one of those narrow Avedgea between two rows of high buildings in the very heart of Paris, was intensely white. He-had not gone a hundred feet when he stopped suddenly before a heart-rending spectacle, one that would have touched the sympathies of all bat the most hardened of gamblers.

On a stone bench, near the doorway of a wealthy residence, sat a little girl six or seven years old, b\rely covered by a ragged black gown. She had fallen asleep in spite of the bitter cold, her body bent forward in a pitiful posture of resigned exhaustion. Her poor little bead and her dainty shoulders had moulded themselves into the angle of the freezing wall. One of her worn slippers had fallen from her dangling foot and lay in the snow before her. Lucien de Hem went up to the child, impelled by an instinct of pity, when suddenly he saw something glitter in the little slipper at his feet. He stopped. It was a louis dor.

Lucien was just about to awaken her when he heard a voice in his ear which whispered, with the drawling inflection of the old Pole, " When the clock strikes twelve, seventeen will be the winning number." He looked anxiously up and down the street, and, having assured himself that he had no witness, he knelt, and, reaching out cautiously with trembling fingers, stole the treasure from the little shoe, then rose with a spring and ran breathlessly down the street. He rushed like a madman up the stairs of the gambling house, flung open the door, and burst into the room at the first stroke of midnight. He threw the gold piece on the table and cried " Seventeen,!"

Seventeen won. He now won 72 louis. The crowd pressed closer to the table, and peered anxiously over each other's shoulders as the play greAV more and more exciting. He left the 72 louis on the same colour. The red came out again. He doubled the stake twice, three times, and always with the same success. Before him was a huge pile of gold and bank notes. He tried the " twelve," the "column," he worked every combination. His luck was something unheard of, something almost supernatural. He staked two and three hundred louis at a time, and aa his fantastic luck never failed him he soon won back tbe whole capital that had constituted his inherited fortune.

Old Dronski the Pole, who had asked for a beggarly five francs but a half hour before, glared at Lucien as if he could devour him. In his haste to begin the .game he had not even thought of taking off his fur-lined coat, the great pockets of which were now swoollen with the rolls of bank notes and heavy with the weight of gold. His face was flushed, his hand unsteady, and a reckless, vibrant bravado crept into his voice. Not knowiog where to put the money that was steadily accumulating before him, he stuffed it away in the inside and outside pockets of his coat, his vest, his trousers, in his cigar-case, his handkerchief. And still he played and still he won, his brain whirling the meantime like that of a drunkard.

But withal there was a gnawing at his heart; he could not rid himself of the vision of the child a.leep in the snow—the child whom he had robbad. "In just a few minutes," said he, "1 will go back to her. She must be there in the same place. Of course sho must be there." But the clock struck one, a quarter-past, half past, and Lucien was still there. Finally, a few minutes before two, the man opposite him rose brusquely, and said in a loud voice:— " The bank is broken gentlemen."

Lucien started, and wedging his way brutally through the group of gamblers, who pressed around him, hurried into the street and ran as fast as he could toward the stone In a moment he saw by .he light of .fcuTgaa that the child was still there. " God'be«, praised !" said he, and his heart give a great throb of joy. He took her lit.le hand in his. Poor little hand, how cold it was! He caught her under the arms and lifted her. Her head fell back, but she did not awake. "The happy sleep of childhood," thought he. He pressed her close to hi* breast to warm her, and with a vague presentiment he tried to arouse her from this heavy sleep by kissing her eyelids. But he realised then with horror that through the child's half-open lids her eyes were dull, glassy, fixed. A distracting suspicion flashed through his mind. He put his lip 3to the child's mouth ; he felt no breath.

" Mart Dieu ! Mon Dieu !" what have I done?" he cried in his despair. Ie was murder, a life taken for a paltry louis. What could he do now? While Lucien had been building a fortune with the louis stolen from this little one, she, homeless and forsaken, had perished with the cold. Lucien felt a suffocating knot at bis throat. In his anguish he tried to cry out; and in the effort which he made he ftwoke from his nightmare, and found himseif on the leather lounge in the gambling-room, where he had f alien asleep a little before midnight. The gargon of the den had gone home at about 5 o'clock, and out of pity had not wakened him. A misty December dawn made tbe window panes pale. Lucien went out, pawned his watch, took a bath, then went over to the Bureau of Recruits and enlisted as a volunteer in the First Regiment of the Chassenrs d'Afrique.