The Arcades Project - Operi

fills all wanton behavior with fateful forwardness, fateful concupiscence, bringing
even pleasure to kneel before its throne. [01,1]
"When I turn back in thought to the Salon des Etrangers, as it was in the second
decade of our century, I see before me the finely etched features and gallant figure
of the Hungarian Count Hunyady, the greatest gambler of his day, who hack then
took all society's breath away . ... Hunyady's luck for a long time was extraorclinary;
no hank could withstand his assault, and his winnings must have amounted
to nearly two million francs. His manner was surprisingly calm and extremely
distinguished; he sat there, as it appeared, in complete equanimity, his right hand
in the hreast of his jacket, while thousands of francs hung upon the fall of a card or
a roll of the dice. His valet, however, confided to an indiscreet friend that Monsieur's
nerves were not so steely as he wanted people to helieve, and that of a
morning the count more often than not would hear the bloody traccs of his nails,
which in his excitement he had dug into the flesh of his chest as the game was taking
a dangerous turn." Captain Gronow, Aus der grossen Welt (Stuttgart, 1908), p. 59.1
[01,2]
On the way BlUcher gambled in Paris, see Grollow's hook, Aus der grossen Welt
. When he had lost, he forced the Bank of France to advance him
100,000 francs so he could continue playing; after this seandal broke, he had to
leave Paris. Bliicher never quit Salon 113 at the Palais-Royal, and spent six
million during his stay; all his lands were in pledge at the time of his departure
from Paris ." Paris took in more during the occupation than it paid out
in war reparations. [01,3]
It is only by comparison with the ancien regime that one can say that in the
nineteenth century the bourgeois takes to gambling. [01,4]
The following account shows very conclusively how public immorality (in con­
trast to private) carries in itself, in its liberating cynicism, its own corrective. It is
reported by Carl Benedict Hase, who was in France as an indigent tutor and who
sent letters home from Paris and other stations of his wandering. "As I was
walking in the vicinity of the Pont Neuf, a heavily made-up prostitute accosted
me. She had on a light muslin dress that was tucked up to the knee and that
clearly displayed the red silk drawers covering thigh and belly. 'Tiens, liens, mon
ami)' she said, you are young, you're a foreigner, you will have need of it." She
then seized my hand, slipped a piece of paper into it, and disappeared in the
crowd. Thinking I had been given an address, I looked at the missive; and what
did I read?-An advertisement for a doctor who was claiming to cure all imagin­
able aihnents in the shortest possible time. It is strange that the girls who are
responsible for the malady should here put in hand the means to recover from
it." Carl Benedict Hase, Briefi von der Wanderung und aus Paris (Leipzig, 1894),
pp. 48-49. [01,5]