'Who is denying you anything? Even Agnesina has pearl earrings. Put them in; it will make a larger sum. Her cradle has antique lace on it; Signora Parascandolo presented it to her. It is valuable. Take it; it will bring up the sum.'
'Look here, Luisa,' her husband began saying pantingly, emotion choking his utterance, 'I swear to you the money is not intended for gambling; I would not have dared to ask it from you, a good woman, if it was. You have such good reasons to despise me already. But it is a debt for former stakes I made--a terrible debt to a money-lender. He threatens to protest it to-morrow--to seize my goods. This cannot be allowed to happen; a merchant whose bills are protested ought to die.'
'That is true,' she said, hanging her head.
'It may be,' he added after a short hesitation. 'Perhaps I would have taken some of it to gamble with--just a little, only to try and recoup myself--only for that, Luisella.'
'In short, you cannot keep from gambling!' his wife cried out in a rage.
He trembled like a guilty boy, and did not answer.
'Can you not keep from it?' she asked again, attacked by a most terrible fear.
'Look here, this is how it is: it is a perfidious passion. You do not know what it is; you must have felt it to know; you must have panted and dreamt, or you cannot think what it is like. One starts gambling for a joke, out of curiosity, as a little challenge to fortune. One goes on, pricked to the quick by delusions, excited by vague desires that grow. Woe to you if you win anything--an _ambo_, a small _terno_! It is all up with you, for your chance of winning seems certain. Do you see? You feel certain of winning a large sum, as you have managed to get a small amount, and you put back not only all you have gained, but you double, treble the stake in the weeks that follow your success. It is the devil's money going back to hell. What a passion it is, Luisella! It is bad for one to win, and bad not to win. Then the dream, that for seven days keeps you alive, on the eighth day gives you a bitter disappointment; it ends by setting your blood on fire, and to increase your chances of winning at any cost, your stakes increase frightfully; the desire of winning gets to be a madness. The soul gets sick; it neither sees nor hears anything. No family ties, position, nor fortune, can stand against this passion.'