Five days afterwards I went to Monte Carlo again, to lunch with some brother authors. In the meantime, though I had been chained to my desk by unalterable engagements, I had thought constantly upon the art and craft of gambling. One of these authors knew Monte Carlo, and all that therein is, as I know Fleet Street. And to my equal astonishment and pleasure he said, when I explained my system to him: “Couldn’t have a better!” And he proceeded to remark positively that the man who had a decent system and the nerve to stick to it through all crises, would infallibly win from the tables--not a lot, but an average of several louis per sitting of two hours. “Gambling,” he said, “is a matter of character. You have the right character,” he added. You may guess whether I did not glow with joyous pride. “The tables make their money from the plunging fools,” I said, privately, “and I am not a fool.” A man was pointed out to me who extracted a regular income from the tables. “But why don’t the authorities forbid him the rooms?” I demanded, “Because he’s such a good advertisement. Can’t you see?” I saw.
We went to the Casino late after lunch. I cut myself adrift from the rest of the party and began instantly to play. In forty-five minutes, with my “system,” I had made forty-five francs. And then the rest of the party reappeared and talked about tea, and trains, and dinner. “Tea!” I murmured disgusted (yet I have a profound passion for tea), “when I am netting a franc a minute!” However, I yielded, and we went and had tea at the Restaurant de Paris across the way. And over the white-and-silver of the tea-table, in the falling twilight, with the incomparable mountain landscape in front of us, and the most _chic_ and decadent Parisianism around us, we talked roulette. Then the Russian Grand Duke who had won several thousand pounds in a few minutes a week or two before, came veritably and ducally in, and sat at the next table. There was no mistaking his likeness to the Tsar. It is most extraordinary how the propinquity of a Grand Duke, experienced for the first time, affects even the proverbial phlegm of a British novelist. I seemed to be moving in a perfect atmosphere of Grand Dukes! And I, too, had won! The art of literature seemed a very little thing.