Part 53

Homburg within the past ten years has also become very fashionable, and counts its summer visitors by the tens of thousands. It lacks the pictorial quality of Baden, but its atmosphere is reputed to be extremely salubrious, and its society is delightful, of course. Being so near Frankfort, many persons, particularly those in delicate health, reside there all the year round, and many of the Frankforters have their residences at the springs.

Wiesbaden, even more than Homburg, is the home of the denizens of the old German capital, and by reason of its larger population, has greater attractions than the rival watering-place. A large number of retired bankers and merchants from various parts of the Continent have villas at Wiesbaden, and every year the number increases.

[Sidenote: QUALITY OF THE VISITORS.]

Ems has had, and still has, the reputation of being patronized extensively by crowned heads and the nobility; but the prosperous and pleasure-loving generally are hieing to the banks of the Lahn more and more every season, and making its society more agreeable and democratic at the same time. The annual attendance is much less than at any of the other three springs, but they who go to Ems claim that the quality of its visitors more than compensates for any want of quantity.

The four German spas are on the whole very much alike, barring topical features. They each claim great antiquity in regard to the fame of their waters, holding, and upon good grounds, that the old Romans found vast benefit in the healing virtues of the baths. For generations they were frequented only by invalids, but of late years gayety and enjoyment have been the object of the majority of their patrons. The gambling, it must be confessed, has been, and is still, the chief attraction; not so much because all the visitors wish to play themselves, but they like to see others play, and to be part of the great variety of people whom the tables draw to the different spas. Since the gambling has ceased, as it did last year (1872), the German watering-places have lost much of their allurement, and the thousands who used to go there will be represented by hundreds merely. What is considered wickedness has unquestionably its spice and charm for the average mind, and a certain departure from the customary and conventional creates a species of magnetism.

The games at the baths are _roulette_ and _rouge-et-noir_, frequently called _trente-et-quarante_. The smallest stake allowed at _roulette_ is a florin (about fifty cents) and at _rouge-et-noir_ two florins. The largest bet that can be made at the former is four thousand florins, and the largest bet that can be made at the latter game is five thousand six hundred florins. The capital at the _roulette_ table is thirty thousand francs (six thousand dollars), and at _rouge-et-noir_ one hundred and fifty thousand francs (thirty thousand dollars). When this sum is won by any of the bettors, the bank is declared broken, and the table is closed for the day, but is re-opened on the day following for all to test still further their good or ill luck. Newspaper correspondents are constantly writing about the breaking of the bank at Baden or Homburg, depending, as many such writers do, upon their imagination for their facts. The truth is, the bank is very seldom broken,—sometimes not more than once or twice during the whole season,—and when it is, it almost invariably wins back from the fortunate player all, and much more than he has gained.

[Sidenote: SPLENDOR OF THE SALOONS.]

The gambling saloons are in large and splendid buildings, beautifully frescoed and gilded in the interior, and luxuriously furnished. They are called the Conversationshaus, the Cursaal or Curhaus, containing, in addition to the gambling tables, spacious apartments for reading, dining, dancing, and lounging. The tables are thronged during the height of the season by elegantly dressed men and women of divers nationalities. They are presided over by the banker,—so he is styled,—who receives and pays out the money, and keeps general watch over the game, and by several croupiers, who with a little rake, draw in or push out the stakes as they are won or lost by the bank. During July and August, the gaming saloons, in which there are generally six or eight roulette or rouge-et-noir tables, present a brilliant spectacle. Anybody may enter, if he be respectably dressed and well-mannered, though he must leave his cane or umbrella with the lackeys in the vestibule, remove his hat, and refrain from speaking above a whisper. Why the Goddess of Chance should be entitled to the homage of silence may seem singular; but when it is remembered that all gamesters, while engaged at play, are exceedingly nervous, and therefore morbidly sensitive, it is plain enough why the strictest order and quiet should be carefully preserved.

[Sidenote: ALL KINDS OF WOMEN.]

The spectacle, I have said, is brilliant; and indeed it is. The saloons are adorned like palaces; immense mirrors, in deep gilt frames, are upon the walls; rich silk and lace curtains depend from the windows; gorgeous chandeliers diffuse their radiance; velvet sofas invite to rest, and the clink of gold tempts to hazard. About the tables are gathered young and lovely women, richly dressed, from the cities of the old world and the new, and men in fashionable attire, representing various ranks, professions, and callings. There are dowager duchesses from England, pretty countesses from France, fleshy baronesses from Germany, delicate maidens from America, lorettes from Paris, adventuresses from Naples, danseuses from Petersburg, and actresses from Vienna. Spanish grandees stand shoulder to shoulder with French communists, who fought like tigers for the possession of the French capital; Calabrian bandits, who have retired, independent, from the trade of throat-cutting, are in close contact with honest Holland burghers; Russian princes hand their stakes to professional blacklegs recently arrived from London; Swiss statesmen exchange nods with bankrupt gamesters; and Belgian chevaliers of industry smile, as they win, upon Teutonic philanthropists risking a few napoleons, simply for lack of something better to do.

The air of the players is entirely genteel, and their manners completely negative and subdued. Whether they are lucky or unlucky, would seem to make no difference to them; they give no outward sign; their faces are usually immovable, unless high breeding, as it is commonly understood, prompts them to look cheerful when they lose, and melancholy when they win.

The slightest disturbance is very rare in the saloons. I have been in them, day after day, without noticing the least departure from order, or the smallest violation of conventional courtesy. Occasionally, some undisciplined man manifests his nervousness and excitement outwardly, when, if the stony stare or facial disapproval of those about him does not chill him back to conventional bearing, the lackeys, always in attendance, induce him to carry his demonstrations into the open air.

The impression obtained from the saloons by a new comer is, that all the habitués are amiable, insouciant, comfortable, and prosperous. He would never suspect that, behind all this fair comedy, lurks the sombre spirit of tragedy; that the serenest faces mask an aching mind, and that the softest smiles hide, but do not help, a breaking heart. Nowhere under the sun is social masquerading more skilful and complete than in the German temples of chance. Everything is so smooth, so decorous, so delicate, so nicely adjusted, that one who seeks for inner contrasts must seem like a cynic and an iconoclast. To him who can believe in appearances, Wiesbaden and Ems are the most satisfactory places of sojourn. They express the essence of formal conventionality, and the rounded relation between unexceptionable raiment and unexceptionable manners. They point to the promised land of adaptation, and predict the millennium of mode.

There have ever been, and there ever will be, any number of persons foolish enough to think they can break the bank, if they will only watch the game closely, and profit by the favor of fortune. It is this delusion which sends, year after year, so many victims to the Conversationshaus and Cursaal, and keeps up the faith of the victims, even after they have been ruined again and again.

[Sidenote: THE DIRECTION.]

The gaming saloons are governed and regulated by a stock company, under the name of the Direction, which is the closest of close corporations. It is eminently impersonal too, nobody knowing the names of, or, indeed anything about, its members. Of course, its stock, like that of some of our gas companies and banks in New York, is not to be had, and is never quoted. The directors pay a license to the petty governments under which the tables are kept, and which are largely sustained thereby. The license varies materially. At Baden it is about seventy-five thousand dollars a year, and the Direction, in addition thereto, pays all the expenses of the Conversationshaus, whatever is required for the preservation and improvement of the adjoining grounds and gardens, and makes many other outlays, which must increase the total sum to fully one hundred and fifty thousand dollars. At Homburg the license is some fifty thousand dollars, and, moreover, the Direction of the Cursaal lights the little town, keeps it in good condition, supports its hospital and other charitable institutions. At Ems and Wiesbaden, the government tax—for that is what the license really is—is about sixty thousand dollars for the former, and forty thousand dollars for the latter place.

[Sidenote: CAPITAL OF THE BANKS.]

The capital of the Direction is set down at from two million to one million five hundred thousand dollars, though I seriously question if much more than one tenth of the sum has ever been paid in. The tables usually clear from two hundred and fifty thousand to five hundred thousand dollars annually; the profits being larger, of course, at Baden than at Ems, and varying with the season, and the luck of the bank. Not long ago, the Homburg bank was broken five times during the year, and yet the Direction, even then, declared a dividend, it is said, of nearly twenty-five per cent. on their capital. The income from the stocks of the German gambling companies is reputed to be enormous, and I have met men in many foreign countries who were credited by rumor with owning such shares. They had no visible means of support, and still they lived luxuriously, even prodigally, merely because they had had the good fortune to secure a small amount of stock in the Cursaal or Curhaus.

The limitations and the percentage at _roulette_ and _rouge-et-noir_ are seldom taken sufficiently into account by the _galerie_, as the bettors are named. Those, in the long run, will beat anybody and everybody, whatever run of luck they may have now and then. The games are based on an ultimate certainty, almost mathematical, in favor of the bank, and the prevalent notion that the players can have any permanent advantage is simply absurd. The chances on the side of the bank are so many, that, in a given time, it must inevitably win, and win largely. All the systems by which the _galerie_ expect to triumph are utterly false and deceptious. They have done more, by a certain speciousness, to lead men to their ruin, than anything connected with the passion for hazard. They invariably fail, because of the limitations in bets, and the percentage in favor of the tables; but the advocate of the system very seldom reckons upon these great drawbacks. This class of men believe that will happen which they wish to have happen, and are therefore incapable of clear perception of anything opposed to their theories and desires.

[Sidenote: THE ODDS AGAINST BETTORS.]

The one adverse fact, above any other, to bettors generally is, that they very seldom, if ever, play as recklessly when they are winning as when they are losing. The reason is that, in the latter circumstances, they are endeavoring to win back their stakes, and are consequently in more or less desperate mood; while in the former case they are satisfied with what comes to them, and not tempted constantly to augment their bets for the sake of getting even. Irrational and ridiculous as it appears, there certainly seems to be such a thing as a run of luck, good or ill. We have all experienced this many times, albeit we may express the phrase in other words. On certain days things go wrong with us, and on certain other days they flow smoothly and prosperously, though we are wholly unconscious, on any of the days, of doing aught except our best to accomplish desired results. Sitting down to a game of whist in the evening, we find we cannot get a good hand, shuffle or change the cards as we may. The next evening, or the next morning, high cards and trumps come to us at every deal, as if some good genius had arranged the deal for us. What is this but a run of luck? In gambling, as every gambler knows, men are constantly having such runs. Whatever card or color you lay your stake on is almost sure to win to-day, and to-morrow almost as sure to lose. When you are fortunate, you make your ventures with at least a moderate degree of prudence. When you are unfortunate, your only thought is to get back the money you have parted with, and you keep doubling your stakes in the hope of achieving your purpose, instead of quitting the table, as you ought, when you plainly discover that fate is against you; or, in other words, that some mysterious and incomprehensible influence thwarts your every purpose.

[Sidenote: SUPERSTITION OF GAMBLERS.]

Such inexplicable agencies or influences render gamesters superstitious. Having seen the tribe in almost every part of the world, I have always found them more or less tinctured with superstition. No amount of facts or arguments will drive it out of them, for by long indulgence it has grown to be next to an instinct. They have implicit faith in luck of every kind—in lucky days, lucky circumstances, lucky persons, lucky influences. Sometimes they will not bet themselves, but will ask others to bet for them. Something occurs in the morning which they interpret as a warning, and for the remainder of the twenty-four hours they will not touch a card or lay a wager. At the German baths this peculiarity is frequently observed. A man in luck is pestered to bet for others, and is offered a percentage if he will do so. This or that person is regarded as unlucky, and a patron of the green cloth will not stand on the same side of the table with him. A passing cloud, a chance-dropped phrase, a change of position, or any one of a thousand nothings, will induce a professional gamester to make, or prevent him from making, risks, concerning which he has ordinarily no prejudice. The folly of play is much surpassed by the folly of players, who become so permeated with fancies, theories, and fanaticisms, that on the subject they are specially interested in they are positively monomaniacs. I have talked with old habitués of Homburg and Wiesbaden respecting chances, coincidences, and systems, until I have discovered that long attendance on and close watching of the treacherous tables had absolutely turned their brains. They thought they were the shrewdest and most sagacious of mortals, and pitied me supremely, because I happened to have a little common sense in regard to _roulette_ and _rouge-et-noir_, and because I would not believe that mere chance should be treated as if it were a positive science.

No one can form any adequate conception of the mental vagaries, bordering upon lunacy, of professional gamesters, until he has spent several seasons at the German spas, and become intimately acquainted with the men and women composing the _galerie_. Their entire conduct is regulated by a desire to obtain luck. They strive to propitiate fortune, as if it were, as the ancients believed, a personal agency, subject to unaccountable whims and caprices. Many of their acts of charity are done not so much from benevolence as from a notion that it will influence favorably the issues of the games to which they are so wedded. This is true not only of gamesters abroad, but of gamesters everywhere. As a rule, they are far from intellectual, and hence superstition meets with little resisting power when it has once begun to encroach upon their understanding.

[Sidenote: DIFFERENT MOTIVES FOR PLAY.]

There are not only different classes of players, but players from different motives. The object of the majority is merely mercenary: they frequent the tables only to win money; they make hazard a business, foolishly hoping to reduce it to something like a rule. Other habitués of the springs bet for excitement, as they drink wine and seek adventures. They are not avaricious. When they win largely, they spend freely; and at the end of every season, whatever their success, they are much behind the game. The members of the third order are sufferers from ennui, and regard _roulette_ and _rouge-et-noir_ simply as a pastime. They have formed the habit of playing, and cannot break it. Their stakes are small, generally; but they are devoted to the tables, sitting there from eleven in the morning to eleven at night,—the fixed time for the perilous sport,—and frequently do not win twenty florins a week. A number of persons play because it is the fashion, though they do not continue it long, for the same reason. The game proves so magnetic that they either feel it a duty to abandon it altogether, or they are drawn into it, and are very soon too weak to resist its fascinations.

Very many, who have begun in the spirit of imitation, have grown to be confirmed gamblers. One of the most infatuated players I have ever known was a Spaniard, who went to Homburg to get rid of the rheumatism, and who, after three seasons of abstinence, put down a single napoleon, simply because he did not wish to seem odd. The risking of that little coin has since cost him a small fortune; and if he were to live a thousand years,—as he told me himself,—he could not be near _rouge-et-noir_ without taking part in it.

[Sidenote: DIVERS NATIONALITIES AS GAMESTERS.]

America, or rather the United States, is more puritanic than other countries. Gambling is regarded here quite differently from what it is in Europe. Even our transpontine cousins, the English, are much more addicted than we to play. They never have social whist parties without betting at least enough to create an interest. The Germans, unless in prosperous circumstances, are preserved from the habit of gambling by their constitutional economy and thrift. The Latin nations have a natural fondness for whatever turns upon chance. Of these people, the Spaniards enjoy gambling most, and the French least, while the Italians are but little behind the Spaniards in this particular. It is safe to say that all three, hearing the spinning of the _roulette_ wheel, and the clinking of coin at _rouge-et-noir_, could not long be kept from the seductive tables. The Russians—those who travel, at least—love the green cloth, and figure prominently among its devotees. Most of them have money, and are such ardent pleasure-seekers, at the same time possessed of something like an American vanity for spending and making display, that they rarely fail to participate in any dissipation which offers.

[Sidenote: VIRTUES OF THE WATERS.]

It must not be supposed that all the frequenters of the spas indulge in play; for many of them go there for recreation, and merely look at the games. Then, as I have remarked, thousands visit the springs for the benefit of the waters. That they have medical virtues cannot be well questioned, after one is told, as I have been told, of extraordinary cures by those who have been sufferers. Ordinarily, a casual visitor, who rises late, sees very little of the invalids; but if he has a liking for early morning air, and bends his steps towards the pump-room (_Trinkhalle_), he will encounter men and women afflicted with every variety of disease. He will observe them also on their way to and from the baths,—young and old, dark and fair, rich and poor, handsome and homely, cultivated and coarse, graceful and awkward,—all in quest of the invaluable boon, which we never appreciate until it has slipped away. There is something melancholy, as well as grotesque, in the moving panorama of the distempered. They walk with canes and crutches, are carried in invalid chairs or wagons, and look so wan and rueful that I have often felt prompted to apostrophize health as the sum of all blessings. There are young and fair women, fragile from their birth, for whom there is not an atom of hope, and who yet believe they may find some miraculous cure in the baths for lack of constitution, and for inherited disease. The _bon vivant_, peevish and irritable from the gout, limps along, and the overworked man of brains, paralyzed on one side, is wheeled over the pavement by the stupid lackey, unconscious that he is the possessor of nerves or a stomach. The dyspeptic—of course an American—glowers on everybody as he passes, but appears to hate no one as much as himself. After having fancied himself cursed with every disease, and after consulting physicians of the highest grade on both sides of the Atlantic, he has come to Ems to test the virtue of the baths. They have done him no good, for he will not be prudent either in his diet or his habits; and he will go home with his mind made up that all medicinal springs are humbugs. He is unaware that the cause of his ailment is dyspepsia, and that it has gotten into his mind. On Monday, he thinks he has consumption; on Tuesday, he fancies it is liver complaint; on Wednesday, he is sure his kidneys are deranged; on Thursday, no one can convince him that he is not suffering from enlargement of the heart; on Friday, he declares he has the marasmus; on Saturday, he swears nothing was the matter with him originally, but that the infernal physicians have poisoned him; and on Sunday, he contemplates suicide as a means of relief. The poor man is the victim of bad cooking, for which our country is famous, and his excessive haste in eating. If he had been born in France, and taken his meals at the Paris restaurants, he would be to-day one of the most contented, instead of the most miserable of men. Talk as we may, digestion is the foundation of human happiness, and will keep us on good terms with ourselves when an unsullied conscience and troops of friends are of no avail.

[Sidenote: HYPOCHONDRIACS.]