The colonel then put a thousand francs on the black and won.

In spite of this remarkable piece of luck, his head grew weary; he felt it, though he continued to play.

But that divining sense which leads a gambler, and which comes in flashes, was already failing him.

Intermittent perceptions, so fatal to all gamblers, set in.

Lucidity of mind, like the rays of the sun, can have no effect except by the continuity of a direct line; it can divine only on condition of not breaking that line; the curvettings of chance bemuddle it.