There is a comic side, more or less appreciable, in all blackguardism--here there was nothing but tragedy--mute, weird tragedy.
The quiet in the room was horrible.

The thin, haggard, long-haired young man, whose sunken eyes fiercely watched the turning up of the cards, never spoke; the flabby, fat-faced, pimply player, who pricked his piece of pasteboard perseveringly, to register how often black won, and how often red--never spoke; the dirty, wrinkled old man, with the vulture eyes and the darned great-coat, who had lost his last _sou,_ and still looked on desperately, after he could play no longer--never spoke.

Even the voice of the croupier sounded as if it were strangely dulled and thickened in the atmosphere of the room.

I had entered the place to laugh, but the spectacle before me was something to weep over.

I soon found it necessary to take refuge in excitement from the depression of spirits which was fast stealing on me.