Luckily for shrewd players, there are people to be found among the spectators who will always sustain them.

Ashamed of having to defend a piece of wrong-doing, they stoutly deny it.

Do not accuse them of wilful infatuation; such men have a sense of their dignity; governments set them the example of a virtue which consists in burying their dead without chanting the Misere of their defeats.

If the chevalier did allow himself this bit of shrewd practice,--which, by the bye, would have won him the regard of the Chevalier de Gramont, a smile from the Baron de Foeneste, a shake of the hand from the Marquis de Moncade,--was he any the less that amiable guest, that witty talker, that imperturbable card-player, that famous teller of anecdotes, in whom all Alencon took delight?
Besides, in what way was this action, which is certainly within the rights of a man's own will,--in what way was it contrary to the ethics of a gentleman?
When so many persons are forced to pay annuities to others, what more natural than to pay one to his own best friend?
But Laius is dead-- To return to the period of which we are writing: after about fifteen years of this way of life the chevalier had amassed ten thousand and some odd hundred francs.

On the return of the Bourbons, one of his old friends, the Marquis de Pombreton, formerly lieutenant in the Black mousquetaires, returned to him--so he said--twelve hundred pistoles which he had lent to the marquis for the purpose of emigrating.