The Gambler, Fyodor Dostoevsky [free ebook reader .TXT] 📗

have honourably preferred to serve as a lackey rather than to act as a thief; but what the future may have in store for you I tremble to think. Now goodbye. You are in want of money, I suppose? Then take these ten louis d’or. More I shall not give you, for you would only gamble it away. Take care of these coins, and farewell. Once more, take care of them.”

“No, Mr. Astley. After all that has been said I⁠—”

“Take care of them!” repeated my friend. “I am certain you are still a gentleman, and therefore I give you the money as one gentleman may give money to another. Also, if I could be certain that you would leave both Homburg and the gaming-tables, and return to your own country, I would give you a thousand pounds down to start life afresh; but, I give you ten louis d’or instead of a thousand pounds for the reason that at the present time a thousand pounds and ten louis d’or will be all the same to you⁠—you will lose the one as readily as you will the other. Take the money, therefore, and goodbye.”

“Yes, I will take it if at the same time you will embrace me.”

“With pleasure.”

So we parted⁠—on terms of sincere affection.

But he was wrong. If I was hard and undiscerning as regards Polina and De Griers, he was hard and undiscerning as regards Russian people generally. Of myself I say nothing. Yet⁠—yet words are only words. I need to act. Above all things I need to think of Switzerland. Tomorrow, tomorrow⁠—Ah, but if only I could set things right tomorrow, and be born again, and rise again from the dead! But no⁠—I cannot. Yet I must show her what I can do. Even if she should do no more than learn that I can still play the man, it would be worth it. Today it is too late, but tomorrow. Yet I have a presentiment that things can never be otherwise. I have got fifteen louis d’or in my possession, although I began with fifteen gülden. If I were to play carefully at the start⁠—But no, no! Surely I am not such a fool as that? Yet why should I not rise from the dead? I should require at first but to go cautiously and patiently and the rest would follow. I should require but to put a check upon my nature for one hour, and my fortunes would be changed entirely. Yes, my nature is my weak point. I have only to remember what happened to me some months ago at Roulettenberg, before my final ruin. What a notable instance that was of my capacity for resolution! On the occasion in question I had lost everything⁠—everything; yet, just as I was leaving the Casino, I heard another gülden give a rattle in my pocket! “Perhaps I shall need it for a meal,” I thought to myself; but a hundred paces further on, I changed my mind, and returned. That gülden I staked upon manque⁠—and there is something in the feeling that, though one is alone, and in a foreign land, and far from one’s own home and friends, and ignorant of whence one’s next meal is to come, one is nevertheless staking one’s very last coin! Well, I won the stake, and in twenty minutes had left the Casino with a hundred and seventy gülden in my pocket! That is a fact, and it shows what a last remaining gülden can do.⁠ ⁠… But what if my heart had failed me, or I had shrunk from making up my mind?⁠ ⁠…

No: tomorrow all shall be ended!

Endnotes

Dear little Grandmother. ↩

The Russian form of “Mind your own business.” ↩

Translated literally⁠—The Great Poulterer. ↩

Rascal. ↩

Colophon

The Gambler
was published in 1866 by
Fyodor Dostoevsky.
It was translated from Russian in 1915 by
C. J. Hogarth.

This ebook was produced for
Standard Ebooks
by
Robin Whittleton,
and is based on a transcription produced in 2000 by
Martin Adamson and Al Haines
for
Project Gutenberg
and on digital scans available at the
Internet Archive.

The cover page is adapted from
Gamblers in Monte Carlo,
a painting completed in 1892 by
Edvard Munch.
The cover and title pages feature the
League Spartan and Sorts Mill Goudy
typefaces created in 2014 and 2009 by
The League of Moveable Type.

The first edition of this ebook was released on
July 1, 2020, 11:40 p.m.
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