Everybody gambles in Paris. I had no idea that so desperate a vice
could be so universal, and so little deprecated as it is. The
gambling-houses are as open and as ordinary a resort as any public
promenade, and one may haunt them with as little danger to his
reputation. To dine from six to eight, gamble from eight to ten, go to
a ball, and return to gamble till morning, is as common a routine for
married men and bachelors both, as a system of dress, and as little
commented on. I sometimes stroll into the card-room at a party, but I
can not get accustomed to the sight of ladies losing or winning money.
Almost all Frenchwomen, who are too old to dance, play at parties; and
their daughters and husbands watch the game as unconcernedly as if
they were turning over prints. I have seen English ladies play, but
with less philosophy. They do not lose their money gayly. It is a
great spoiler of beauty, the vexation of a loss. I think I never could
respect a woman upon whose face I had remarked the shade I often see
at an English card-table. It is certain that vice walks abroad in
Paris, in many a shape that would seem, to an American eye, to show
the fiend too openly. I am not over particular, I think, but I would
as soon expose a child to the plague as give either son or daughter a
free rein for a year in Paris.