Chapter XXV: The Lottery Office

“How does it happen that I am ruined, while I see other men win all the time? Shall I never be able to find a way to grow rich rapidly?”

Thus did Edouard commune with himself on the day of Dufresne’s departure for Villeneuve-Saint-Georges. He came out of an academy--a decent method of designating a gambling hell,--where he had lost a large part of the sum he had borrowed on his house. He strode angrily along the streets of Paris; he dreamed of cards, of martingales, of series, of _parolis_, and of all those unlucky combinations which constantly perturb the brain of a gambler. A noisy burst of music, the booming of a bass drum, the strains of two clarinets and a pair of cymbals, roused him from his reverie; he raised his eyes with the intention of walking away from the musicians, whose uproar tired him, and saw that he was in front of a lottery office. The music which he heard was produced by one of those travelling bands which, for a forty-sou piece given them by the keeper of the office, raise an infernal tumult before the door and attract all the gossips of the neighborhood to the “lucky office” where the list of _ambes_, _ternes_, and even _quaternes_, said to have been won, is hung at the door with an exact statement of the result of the lottery; the whole embellished with pink and blue ribbons like the sweetmeats in a confectioner’s window.

Edouard stopped instinctively, and like all the rest, gazed at the seductive list. Seventy-five thousand francs won with twenty sous! That was very enticing! To be sure, the winner had had a _quaterne_; that is very rare; but still it has been seen, and one man’s chance is as good as another’s.

“Ah! neighbor, what a fine drawing!” said a fish dealer to a fruit woman, who stood near Edouard, copying the result of the lottery; “11, 20, 44, 19, 76.--I ought to be as rich as a queen to-day. Here, for more than a year I have been following up a _dry terne_ on the first three numbers that come out; the day before yesterday was the last day. I was waiting for Thomas, who works at La Vallée; he was going to bring me a goose stuffed with chestnuts for our supper, with some sixteen-sou wine from Eustache’s at the Barreaux Verts, which has a fine bouquet! It was my idea to have a nice little supper in a private room--that brings luck--and to take my ticket when we went home to bed.--But not a bit of it. Thomas kept me cooling my heels, waiting for him. I got tired of it and went to his garret, and he had colic in the loins from dancing too much on Sunday at the _Rabbits_. I had to stay and nurse him, the closing time passed and I forgot my _dry terne_ while I was giving him injections.”

“Poor Françoise! that was hard luck.--Well! my poor dead man might have had pains in his belly--that wouldn’t ‘a’ made me forget my tickets! For the last ten years I’ve always paid my rent with number 20; it went a little by the date this time, but I got it all the same--I put my counterpane up the spout to do it. You see, I’d rather have sold my chemise than dropped it, for I was bound to have it.”

“Do you know any of those that won the big prize?”

“Why, the dry goods dealer’s cook. Three numbers taken out of the wheel at random!”

“That’s what I call luck!”

“Oh! it ain’t to be wondered at; she dreamed that her master used the soup-kettle for a chamber.”

“Then it was sure money! I’m down on my luck; I’ve never been able to dream of nasty things.”

“Oh! as for me, I often used to dream some in my late husband’s time.”

Edouard turned away, forcing a passage through the crowd in front of the office. As he walked along he thought of the numbers that had come out. It was not so quick a way of getting rich as roulette, the chances were less favorable; but the results, when one is lucky, are much more advantageous, as one may win a large sum with a modest coin.

He passed the day thinking about the lottery, and the next morning he decided to tempt fortune in that new manner. He entered the first office that he saw; and he had not to go far, for lottery offices are more numerous than poor relief offices.

It was ten o’clock in the morning. It was the last day of a foreign lottery. The office was full, the crowd was so great that one could hardly enter, and it was necessary to take one’s place at the end of a long line in order to exchange one’s money for some slips of paper.

Edouard decided to wait. He glanced at the crowd that surrounded him. It was composed almost entirely of people of the lower classes--street hawkers, cooks, menders of lace, cobblers, messengers, rag-pickers.

It is not that the upper classes do not try their luck in the lottery; but fashionable people send others to buy tickets for them, and the bourgeois, who are ashamed of what they do, enter only by the private door.

Edouard held his nose, for that assemblage of ladies and gentlemen exhaled an odor anything but agreeable; and the muddy boots of the Savoyard, the fish-woman’s herring, the rag-picker’s bag, the cobbler’s wax, and the cook’s whiting formed a combination of smells which would disgust a grenadier. But the purchasers of lottery tickets are engrossed by their calculations and they smell nothing.

While awaiting their turn, the habitués form groups and confide their dreams and ideas to one another. Everyone talks at once; but in that respect everyone is wise; it is a veritable babel, despite the remonstrances of the mistress of the place, who shouts every five minutes, as they do in court:

“Silence in the corner. Pray be quiet, mesdames, you can’t hear yourself think!”

Edouard, not being accustomed to it, was bewildered by the chatter of the gossips, who talked on without stopping; but wealth cannot be bought too dearly, and he made the best of it, and even determined to profit by what he overheard.

“My girl,” said an old hag covered with rags, to another who held her chafing-dish under her arm; “I saw a gray spider behind my bed this morning before breakfast.”

“Pardi!” replied the other--”spiders! I see ’em every day at home!”

“No matter, they bring luck; I’m going to put a crown on 9, 30 and 51; I’m sure they won’t all draw blanks.”

And the poor creature, who wore no stockings and whose skirt was full of holes, took a crown from her pocket to put on her spider. To those who believe firmly in dreams, numbers cease to be numbers, and become the objects they have seen in their dreams, all of which are represented by particular numbers, as set forth in the books of dreams, the _Petit Cagliostro_, the _Aveugle du Bonheur_, and a thousand nice little works of about the same value, which the ticket buyers know by heart. The keeper of the office, who knew her trade, and, when the customer was worth the trouble, could make calculations on the mists of the Seine, told them what numbers to take, when they described their dreams to her.

“Monsieur, give me my oxen,” said an oyster woman, presenting her thirty-sou piece.

“Monsieur, put twenty-four sous on a white cat for me.”

“My aunt’s dressing jacket, monsieur.”

“My little woman, some anchovies, in the first drawing.”

“Give me a _terne_ on artichokes.”

“My child, I saw horses trotting round my room all night, just as if it was a stable.”

“What color were they?” inquired the agent, with the most comical gravity.

“Bless me! wait a minute--I believe they were dappled--no, they were black.”

“That’s 24.--Were they harnessed?”

“I should say so!”

“That’s 23.--Did they run fast?”

“Like the Circus!”

“That’s 72.”

“All right! arrange ’em right for me. With such a dream as that, I can’t fail to have a carriage to ride in.”

“I had a funnier dream than that! I was in a country where there was cows that danced with shepherds and shepherdesses, and houses built of gingerbread.”

“The deuce you say! You could get fat by licking the walls.”

“Let her go on, saucebox.”

“And I was rowing on a river where the water was boiling and bubbling like a soup-kettle.”

“And you caught fish all cooked, eh?”

“Hold your tongue, you magpie!--At last I saw a palace on the other side of the river, come up out of the ground the way they do at the Funambules; the roof was made of diamonds, the walls of gold, the windows of silver and the door of rubies.”

“The devil! that must ‘a’ made your gingerbread houses look mean.”

“When I sees that, I tells my boatman--and a fine young man he was--I tells him to take me to the palace; and would you believe that he asks me to let him make a fool of me as pay for my passage. I said no, sharp, but he didn’t listen to me; he just threw me into the bottom of his boat--and the rascal overpowered me, my dears!”

“Well! so that’s your fine dream! All that just to come to the climax! It was your man, of course; while you was asleep, he----”

“Oh, yes, indeed! Why, not since Saint-Fiacre’s Eve, six months ago----”

“Oho! so you’ve had a row, have you?”

“Why, once he made me swallow truffles for the King of Prussia, and since then, when he comes to me--not if I know it!”

“Well, you’re wrong; yes, you’re wrong! refuse and you’re left to muse. He’ll just take your property somewhere else. Don’t be a fool; once those dogs have found another kennel, there’s no way to bring ’em back; it’s all over!”

“I believe you’re right, Bérénice; I’ll rub a sponge over it next Sunday.”

“And you’ll do well.”

“You’re very good, mesdames,” said a cook, stuffing into her basket the fowl she had just bought, which, from its odor, might have been taken for game, “you’re very good, but my master’s waiting for his chocolate; he wants to go out early and I ain’t lighted my fire yet.--Quick, madame, my regular number; here’s thirty-six sous--please hurry up.”

The cook took her ticket and returned to her master, making figures on the way: the fowl had cost her fifty sous; by calling it eighty-six sous, she would get her ticket for nothing, which was very pleasant. To be sure, her master would eat a tainted fowl instead of a delicate bird; but one must have one’s little perquisites, and what was the use of being a cordon bleu if one did not make something out of the marketing?

“The _considérés_ are very old combinations,” said a little man who had been gazing at the list for three-quarters of an hour; “they’re excellent to play by extracts.”

“See,” said another, “notice that the 6 is a prisoner; it will soon come out.”

“The 2 has come, that brings the 20.”

“The 39 in a hundred and three drawings--it’s an ingot of gold! Zeros haven’t done anything for a long while.”

“That’s true; I’ll bet that they’ll come in a _terne_ or an _ambe_.”

“How often the forties come out! If I’d followed my first idea, I’d have had an _ambe_ at Strasbourg; I must tell you that, when my wife dreams that she’s had a child, the 44 comes out--that never fails. Well! she dreamed that the other night. I’ve got a dog that I’ve taught to draw numbers out of a bag; he’s beginning to do it very well with his paw. He drew out 46, and I was going to put it with my wife’s dream; we thought about it all day, and she wanted to put instead of it the number of her birthday which was very near; and what do you suppose?--my dog’s number came out with her dream!--I wouldn’t sell that beast for three hundred francs.”

“I’m shrewder than you, my dear man,” said an old candy woman; “I’ve got a talisman.”

“A talisman!”

“Yes, it’s a fact; a fortune-teller told me the secret.”

“What is it?” shouted all the gossips at once.

“A bit of clean parchment, with letters written on it with my blood.”

“Mon Dieu! that’s worse than the play at the Ambigu.--Tell us, what do your letters say?”

“Faith! I don’t know; they’re Hebrew, so she said.”

“Look out, Javotte! don’t trust it; it may be an invention of the devil, and then you’ll go straight to hell with your talisman.”

“Bah! I ain’t afraid, and I won’t let go of my little parchment. I’m a philosopher!”

“What a fool she is with her talisman!” said the gossips, when Javotte had gone. “It beats the devil what luck it brings her! She owes everybody in the quarter, and she can’t pay.--But it’s almost market time, and I haven’t put out my goods.”

“And I ought by now to be at the Fontaine des Innocents!”

“Bless my soul! you remind me that my children ain’t up yet, and I’m sure they’re squalling, the little brats! and their gruel has been on the fire ever since eight o’clock.”

“It’ll be well cooked!”

“I’m off; good-day, neighbor.”

“See you soon; we shall have the list if the sun shines.”

Amid this mob, pushed by one, pulled by another, deafened by them all, Edouard waited for three-quarters of an hour for his turn to come. At last he reached the desk; all that he had heard about _considérés_, prisoners and lucky numbers was running in his head; but as he had no idea what to choose, he put twenty francs on the first numbers that occurred to him, and left the office with hope in his pocket.

On the street he met many individuals most shabbily clad, who offered him fifty louis in gold for twelve sous. These gentlemen and ladies apparently disdained for themselves the fortune that they proposed to sell to the passers-by at such a bargain. But Murville declined their offers. He had in his pocket what he wanted. He was already building castles in Spain, for his numbers were excellent--so the agent told him--and could not fail to draw something. He was about to be released from embarrassment; he could live in style, and keep the prettiest, aye, and the most expensive women, which would drive Madame de Géran frantic. In short, he would deny himself nothing.

But the sun shone; at three o’clock the list was posted outside the offices; Edouard, who had been pacing back and forth impatiently in front of the one at which he had bought his ticket, eagerly drew near; he looked at the list and saw that he had drawn nothing.