The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 5, No. 28, February, 1860

V >> Various >> The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 5, No. 28, February, 1860

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The only other games among the modern Romans, which deserve particular
notice from their peculiarity, are those of Cards. In an Italian pack
there are only forty cards,--the eight, nine, and ten of the French and
English cards having no existence. The suits also have different signs
and names, and, instead of hearts, spades, clubs, and diamonds, they are
called _coppe_, _spade_, _bastoni_, and _denari_,--all being of the same
color, and differing entirely in form from our cards. The _coppe_ are
cups or vases; the _spade_ are swords; the _bastoni_ are veritable clubs
or bludgeons; and the _denari_ are coins. The games are still more
different from ours than the cards, and they are legion in number. There
are _Briscola_, _Tresette_, _Calabresella_, _Banco-Fallito_, _Rossa e
Nera_, _Scaraccoccia_, _Scopa_, _Spizzica_, _Faraone_, _Zecchinetto_,
_Mercante in Fiera_, _La Bazzica_, _Ruba-Monte_, _Uomo-Nero_, _La
Paura_, and I know not how many others,--but they are recorded and
explained in no book, and are only to be picked up orally. Wherever you
go, on _festa_-day, you will find persons playing cards. At the common
_osterias_, before the doors or on the soiled tables within, on the
ruins of the Caesars' palaces and in the Temple of Peace, on the stone
tables in the _vigna_, on the walls along the public roads, on the
uncarved blocks of marble in front of the sculptors' studios, in the
antechambers or gateways of palaces,--everywhere, cards are played.
Every _contadino_ has a pack in his pocket, with the flavor of the soil
upon it. The playing is ordinarily for very low sums, often for nothing
at all. But there are some games which are purely games of luck, and
dangerous. Some of these, as _Rossa e Nera_, _Banco-Fallito_, and
_Zecchinetto_, though prohibited by the government, are none the less
favorite games in Rome, particularly among those who play for money.
_Zecchinetto_ may be played by any number of persons, after the
following manner:--The dealer, who plays against the whole table, deals
to each player one card. The next card is then turned up as a trump.
Each player then makes his bet on the card dealt to him, and places his
money on it. The dealer then deals to the table the other cards in
order, and any of the players may bet on them as they are thrown down.
If a card of the number of that bet on issue before a card corresponding
to the number of the trump, the dealer wins the stake on that card; but
whenever a card corresponding to the trump issues, the player wins on
every card on which he has bet. When the banker or dealer loses at once,
the bank "_fa toppa_," and the deal passes, but not otherwise. Nothing
can be more simple than this game, and it is just as dangerous as it is
simple, and as exciting as it is dangerous. A late Roman _principessa_
is said to have been passionately fond of it, and to have lost
enormously by it. The story runs, that, while passing the evening at a
friend's house, after losing ten thousand _scudi_ at one sitting, she
staked her horses and carriage, which were at the door waiting to take
her home, and lost them also. She then wrote a note to the prince, her
husband, saying that she had lost her carriage and horses at
_Zecchinetto_, and wished others to be sent for her. To which he
answered, that she might return on foot,--which she was obliged to do.

This will serve at least as a specimen of the games of chance played by
the Romans at cards. Of the more innocent games, _Briscola_, _Tresette_,
and _Scaraccoccia_ are the favorites among the common people. And the
first of these may not be uninteresting, as being, perhaps, the most
popular of all. It is played by either two or four persons. The _Fante_
(or Knave) counts as two; the _Carallo_ (equal to our Queen) as three;
the _Re_ (King) as four; the Three-spot as ten; and the Ace as eleven.
Three cards are dealt to each person, and after the deal the next card
is turned as trump, or _Briscola_. Each plays, and, after one card all
round is played, its place is supplied by a new deal of one card to
each. Every card of the trump-suit takes any card of the other suits.
Each player takes as many counting-cards as he can, and, at the end of
the game, he who counts the most wins,--the account being made according
to the value of the cards, as stated above.

[To be continued.]

FOOTNOTES:

[A] See Dessault, _Traite de la Passion du Jeu_.

[B] Even while I am writing these notes, I find almost the same incident
recorded as a "modern instance," in a recent work by Lieutenant-Colonel
Addison, entitled _Traits and Stories of Anglo-Indian Life_; but,
despite the authority of Colonel Addison, I cannot but suspect that he
has simply changed the _venue_, and that his story is but a
_rifacimento_ of the actual case alluded to above.

THE AMBER GODS.

[Concluded.]

Papa made Mr. Dudley stay and dine, and of course we were almost bored
to death, when in came Rose again, stealing behind Lu's chair and
showering her in the twilight with a rain of May-flowers.

"Now you'll have to gather them again," he said.

"Oh, how exquisite! how delicious! how I thank you!" she exclaimed,
without disturbing one, however.

"You won't touch them again? Then I must," he added.

"No! no! Mr. Rose!" I cried. "I'll pick them up and take toll."

"Don't touch them!" said Lu, "they're so sweet!"

"Yes," he murmured lower, "they're like you. I always said so, you
remember."

"Oh, yes! and every May-day but the last you have brought them to me."

"Have you the trailing-arbutus there?" asked Mr. Dudley.

"No," returned Rose.

"I thought I detected strawberries," submitted the other,--"a pleasant
odor which recalls childhood to memory."

For some noses all sweet scents are lumped in one big strawberry;
clovers, or hyacinths, or every laden air indifferently, they still
sniff strawberries. Commonplace things!

"It's a sign of high birth to track strawberry-beds where no fruit is,
Mr. Dudley," said I.

"Very true, Miss Willoughby. I was born pretty high up in the Green
Mountains."

"And so keep your memory green?"

"Strawberries in June," said Rose, good-naturedly. "But fruit out of
season is trouble out of reason, the Dream-Book says. It's May now, and
these are its blossoms."

"Everybody makes such a fuss about ground-laurel!" said I. "I don't see
why, I'm sure. They're never perfect. The leaf is hideous,--a stupid
duenna! You get great green leaves, and the flowers all white; you get
deep, rosy flowers, and the leaves are all brown and bitten. They're
neither one thing nor another. They're just like heliotropes,--no bloom
at all, only scent. I've torn up myriads, to the ten stamens in their
feathered case, to find where that smell comes from,--that is perfectly
delicious,--and I never could. They are a cheat."

"Have you finished your tirade?" asked Rose, indifferently.

"I don't believe you mean so," murmured Lu. "They have a color of their
own, almost human, infantine; and when you mass them, the tone is more
soft and mellow than a flute. Everybody loves May-flowers."

"Just about. I despise flutes. I like bassoons."

"They are prophets of apple-blossoms."

"Which brings them at once into the culinary."

"They are not very showy," said Mr. Dudley; "but when we remember the
Fathers"----

"There's nothing like them," said Rose, gently, as he knelt by Lu,
slowly putting them into order; "nothing but pure, clear things; they're
the fruit of snowflakes, the firstlings of the year. When one thinks how
sweetly they come from their warm coverts and look into this cold,
breezy sky so unshrinkingly, and from what a soil they gather such a
wealth of simple beauty, one feels ashamed."

"Climax worthy of the useless things!" said I.

"The moment in which first we are thoroughly ashamed, Miss Willoughby,
is the sovereign one of our life. Useless things? They are worth king
and bishop. Every year, weariness and depression melt away when atop of
the seasons' crucible boil these little bubbles. Isn't everybody better
for lavishing love? And no one merely likes these; whoever cares at all
loves entirely. We always take and give resemblances or sympathies from
any close connection, and so these are in their way a type of their
lovers. What virtue is in them to distil the shadow of the great pines,
that wave layer after layer with a grave rhythm over them,
into this delicate tint, I wonder. They have so decided an
individuality,--different there from hot-house belles;--fashion strips
us of our characteristics"----

"You needn't turn to me for illustration of exotics," said I.

He threw me a cluster, half-hidden in its green towers, and went on,
laying one by one and bringing out little effects.

"The sweetest modesty clings to them, which Alphonse Karr denies to the
violet, so that they are almost out of place in a drawing-room; one
ought to give them there the shelter of their large, kind leaves."

"Hemlock's the only wear," said Louise.

"Or last year's scarlet blackberry triads. Vines together," he
suggested.

"But sometimes they forget their nun-like habit," she added, "put on a
frolicsome mood, and clamber out and flush all the deep ruts of the
carriage-road in Follymill woods, you remember."

"Penance next year," said I.

"No, no; you are not to bring your old world into my new," objected
Rose. "Perhaps they ran out so to greet the winter-worn mariners of
Plymouth, and have been pursued by the love of their descendants ever
since, they getting charier. Just remember how they grow. Why, you'd
never suspect a flower there, till, happening to turn up a leaf, you're
in the midst of harvest. You may tramp acres in vain, and within a
stone's throw they've been awaiting you. There's something very
charming, too, about them in this,--that when the buds are set, and at
last a single blossom starts the trail, you plucking at one end of the
vine, your heart's delight may touch the other a hundred miles away.
Spring's telegraph. So they bind our coast with this network of flower
and root."

"By no means," I asserted. "They grow in spots."

"Pshaw! I won't believe it. They're everywhere just the same, only
underground preparing their little witnesses, whom they send out where
most needed. You don't suppose they find much joy in the fellowship of
brown pine pins and sad, gray mosses, do you? Some folks say they don't
grow away from the shore; but I've found them, I'm sorry to say, up in
New Hampshire."

"Why sorry?" asked Lu.

"Oh, I like it best that they need our sea. They're eminently choice for
this hour, too, when you scarcely gather their tint,--that tint, as if
moonlight should wish to become a flower,--but their fragrance is an
atmosphere all about you. How genuinely spicy it is! It's the very
quintessence of those regions all whose sweetness exudes in
sun-saturated balsams,--the very breath of pine woods and salt sea
winds. How could it live away from the sea?"

"Why, Sir," said Mr. Dudley, "you speak as if it were a creature!"

"A hard, woody stem, a green, robust leaf, a delicate, odorous flower,
Mr. Dudley, what is it all but an expression of New England character?"

"Doxology!" said I.

"Now, Miss Louise, as you have made me atone for my freedom, the task
being done, let me present them in form."

"I'm sure she needn't praise them," said I.

She didn't.

"I declared people make a great fuss over them," I continued. "And you
prove it. You put me in mind of a sound, to be heard where one gets
them,--a strange sound, like low, distant thunder, and it's nothing but
the drum of a little partridge! a great song out of nothing.--Bless me!
what's that?"

"Oh, the fireworks!" said Lu. And we all thronged to the windows.

"It's very good of your uncle to have them," said Rose. "What a crowd
from the town! Think of the pyrotechnics among comets and aerolites some
fellows may have! It's quite right, too, to make our festivals with
light; it's the highest and last of all things; we never can carry our
imaginations beyond light"----

"Our imaginations ought to carry us," said Lu.

"Come," I said, "you can play what pranks you please with the little
May; but light is my province, my absorption; let it alone."

It grew quite dark, interrupted now and then by the glare of rockets;
but at last a stream of central fire went out in a slow rain of
countless violets, reflected with pale blue flashes in the river below,
and then the gloom was unbroken. I saw them, in that long, dim gleam,
standing together at a window. Louise, her figure almost swaying as if
to some inaudible music, but her face turned to him with such a steady
quiet. Ah, me! what a tremulous joy, what passion, and what search, lit
those eyes! But you know that passion means suffering, and, tracing it
in the original through its roots, you come to pathos, and still
farther, to lamentation, I've heard. But he was not looking down at her,
only out and away, paler than ever in the blue light, sad and resolved.
I ordered candles.

"Sing to me, Louise," said Rose, at length. "It is two years since I
heard you."

"Sing 'What's a' the steer, kimmer,'" I said. But instead, she gave the
little ballad, 'And bring my love again, for he lies among the moors.'

Rose went and leaned over the pianoforte while she sang, bending and
commanding her eyes. He seemed to wish to put himself where he was
before he ever left her, to awaken everything lovely in her, to bring
her before him as utterly developed as she might be,--not only to afford
her, but to force upon her every chance to master him. He seemed to wish
to love, I thought.

"Thank you," he said, as she ceased. "Did you choose it purposely,
Louise?"

Lu sang very nicely, and, though I dare say she would rather not then,
when Mr. Dudley asked for the "Vale of Avoca" and the "Margin of
Zuerich's Fair Waters," she gave them just as kindly. Altogether, quite a
damp programme. Then papa came in, bright and blithe, whirled me round
in a _pas de deux_, and we all very gay and hilarious slipped into the
second of May.

Dear me! how time goes! I must hurry.--After that, _I_ didn't see so
much of Rose; but he met Lu everywhere, came in when I was out, and, if
I returned, he went, perfectly regardless of my existence, it seemed.
They rode, too, all round the country; and she sat to him, though he
never filled out the sketch. For weeks he was devoted; but I fancied,
when I saw them, that there lingered in his manner the same thing as on
the first evening while she sang to him. Lu was so gay and sweet and
happy that I hardly knew her; she was always very gentle, but such a
decided body,--that's the Willoughby, her mother. Yet during these weeks
Rose had not spoken, not formally; delicate and friendly kindness was
all Lu could have found, had she sought. One night, I remember, he came
in and wanted us to go out and row with him on the river. Lu wouldn't go
without me.

"Will you come?" said he, coolly, as if I were merely necessary as a
thwart or thole-pin might have been, turning and letting his eyes fall
on me an instant, then snatching them off with a sparkle and flush, and
such a lordly carelessness of manner otherwise.

"Certainly not," I replied.

So they remained, and Lu began to open a bundle of Border Ballads, which
he had brought her. The very first one was "Whistle an' I'll come to
you, my lad." I laughed. She glanced up quickly, then held it in her
hands a moment, repeated the name, and asked if he liked it.

"Oh, yes," he said. "There couldn't be a Scotch song without that rhythm
better than melody, which, after all, is Beethoven's secret."

"Perhaps," said Louise. "But I shall not sing this."

"Oh, do!" he said, turning with surprise. "You don't know what an
aerial, whistling little thing it is!"

"No."

"Why, Louise! There is nobody could sing it but you."

"Of good discourse, an excellent musician, and her hair shall be of what
color it please God," quoted I, and in came Mr. Dudley, as he usually
did when not wanted; though I've no reason to find fault with him,
notwithstanding his blank treatment of me. He never took any notice,
because he was in love with Lu. Rose never took any notice of me,
either. But with a difference!

Lu was singularly condescending to Mr. Dudley that evening; and Rose,
sitting aside, looked so very much disturbed--whether pleasantly or
otherwise didn't occur to me--that I couldn't help enjoying his
discomfiture, and watching him through it.

Now, though I told you I wasn't nervous, I never should know I had this
luxurious calm, if there were nothing to measure it by; and once in a
great while a perfect whirlpool seizes me,--my blood is all in
turmoil,--I bubble with silent laughter, or cry with all my heart. I had
been in such a strange state a good while, and now, as I surveyed Rose,
it gradually grew fiercer, till I actually sprang to my feet, and
exclaimed, "There! it is insupportable! I've been in the magnetic storm
long enough! it is time something took it from me!" and ran out-doors.

Rose sauntered after, by-and-by, as if unwillingly drawn by a loadstone,
and found the heavens wrapped in a rosy flame of Northern Lights. He
looked as though he belonged to them, so pale and elf-like was his face
then, like one bewitched.

"Papa's fireworks fade before mine," I said. "Now we can live in the
woods, as Lu has been wishing; for a dry southerly wind follows this,
with a blue smoke filming all the distant fields. Won't it be
delicious?"

"Or rain," he replied; "I think it will rain to-morrow,--warm, full
rains"; and he seemed as if such a chance would dissolve him entirely.

As for me, those shifting, silent sheets of splendor abstracted all that
was alien, and left me in my normal state.

"There they come!" I said, as Lu and Mr. Dudley, and some others who had
entered in my absence,--gnats dancing in the beam,--stepped down toward
us. "How charming for us all to sit out here!"

"How annoying, you mean," he replied, simply for contradiction.

"It hasn't been warm enough before," I added.

"And Louise may take cold now," he said, as if wishing to exhibit his
care for her. "Whom is she speaking with? Blarsaye? And who comes
after?"

"Parti. A delightful person,--been abroad, too. You and he can have a
crack about Louvres and Vaticans now, and leave Lu and Mr. Dudley to
me."

Rose suddenly inspected me and then Parti, as if he preferred the crack
to be with cudgels; but in a second the little blaze vanished, and he
only stripped a weigelia branch of every blossom.

I wonder what made Lu behave so that night; she scarcely spoke to Rose,
appeared entirely unconcerned while he hovered round her like an
officious sprite, was all grace to the others and sweetness to Mr.
Dudley. And Rose, oblivious of snubs, paraded his devotion, seemed
determined to show his love for Lu,--as if any one cared a straw,--and
took the pains to be positively rude to me. He was possessed of an odd
restlessness; a little defiance bristled his movements, an air of
contrariness; and whenever he became quiet, he seemed again like one
enchanted and folded up in a dream, to break whose spell he was about to
abandon efforts. He told me life had destroyed my enchantment; I wonder
what will destroy his. Lu refused to sit in the garden-chair he
offered,--just suffered the wreath of pink bells he gave her to hang in
her hand, and by-and-by fall,--and when the north grew ruddier and swept
the zenith with lances of light, and when it faded, and a dim cloud
hazed all the stars, preserved the same equanimity, kept on the _evil_
tenor of her way, and bade every one an impartial farewell at
separating. She is preciously well-bred.

We hadn't remained in the garden all that time, though,--but, strolling
through the gate and over the field, had reached a small grove that
fringes the gully worn by Wild Fall and crossed by the railway. As we
emerged from that, talking gayly, and our voices almost drowned by the
dash of the little waterfall and the echo from the opposite rock, I
sprang across the curving track, thinking them behind, and at the same
instant a thunderous roar burst all about, a torrent of hot air whizzed
and eddied over me, I fell dizzied and stunned, and the night
express-train shot by like a burning arrow. Of course I was dreadfully
hurt by my fall and fright,--I feel the shock now,--but they all stood
on the little mound, from which I had sprung, like so many
petrifactions: Rose, just as he had caught Louise back on firmer ground,
when she was about to follow me, his arm wound swiftly round her waist,
yet his head thrust forward eagerly, his pale face and glowing eyes
bent, not on her, but me. Still he never stirred, and poor Mr. Dudley
first came to my assistance. We all drew breath at our escape, and, a
little slowly, on my account, turned homeward.

"You are not bruised, Miss Willoughby?" asked Blarsaye, wakened.

"Dear Yone!" Lu said, leaving Mr. Dudley's arm, "you're so very pale!
It's not pain, is it?"

"I am not conscious of any. Why should I be injured, any more than you?"

"Do you know," said Rose, _sotto voce_, turning and bending merely his
head to me, "I thought I heard you scream, and that you were dead."

"And what then?"

"Nothing, but that you were lying dead and torn, and I should see you,"
he said,--and said as if he liked to say it, experiencing a kind of
savage delight at his ability to say it.

"A pity to have disappointed you!" I answered.

"I saw it coming before you leaped," he added, as a malignant finality,
and drawing nearer. "You were both on the brink. I called, but probably
neither you nor Lu heard me. So I snatched her back."

Now I had been next him then.

"Jove's balance," I said, taking Parti's arm.

He turned instantly to Lu, and kept by her during the remainder of the
walk, Mr. Dudley being at the other side. I was puzzled a little by Lu,
as I have been a good many times since; I thought she liked Rose so
much. Papa met us in the field, and there the affair must be detailed to
him, and then he would have us celebrate our safety in Champagne.

"Good-bye, Louise," said Rose, beside her at the gate, and offering his
hand, somewhat later. "I'm going away to-morrow, if it's fine."

"Going?" with involuntary surprise.

"To camp out in Maine."

"Oh! I hope you will enjoy it."

"Would you stay long, Louise?"

"If the sketching-grounds are good."

"When I come back, you'll sing my songs? Shake hands."

She just laid a cold touch on his.

"Louise, are you offended with me?"

She looked up with so much simplicity. "Offended, Rose, with you?"

"Not offended, but frozen," I could have said. Lu is like that little
sensitive-plant, shrinking into herself with stiff unconsciousness at a
certain touch. But I don't think he noticed the sad tone in her voice,
as she said good-night; I didn't, till, the others being gone, I saw her
turn after his disappearing figure, with a look that would have been
despairing, but for its supplication.

The only thing Lu ever said to me about this was,--

"Don't you think Rose a little altered, Yone, since he came home?"

"Altered?"

"I have noticed it ever since you showed him your beads, that day."

"Oh! it's the amber," I said. "They are amulets, and have bound him in a
thrall. You must wear them, and dissolve the charm. He's in a dream."

"What is it to be in a dream?" she asked.

"To lose thought of past or future."

She repeated my words,--"Yes, he's in a dream," she said, musingly.

II.

Rose didn't come near us for a fortnight; but he had not camped at all,
as he said. It was the first stone thrown into Lu's life, and I never
saw any one keep the ripples under so; but her suspicions were aroused.
Finally he came in again, all as before, and I thought things might have
been different, if in that fortnight Mr. Dudley had not been so
assiduous; and now, to the latter's happiness, there were several ragged
children and infirm old women in whom, Lu having taken them in charge,
he chose to be especially interested. Lu always was housekeeper, both
because it had fallen to her while mamma and I were away, and because
she had an administrative faculty equal to General Jackson's; and Rose,
who had frequently gone about with her, inspecting jellies and cordials
and adding up her accounts, now unexpectedly found Mr. Dudley so near
his former place that he disdained to resume it himself;--not entirely,
because the man of course couldn't be as familiar as an old playmate;
but just enough to put Rose aside. He never would compete with any one;
and Lu did not know how to repulse the other.

If the amulets had ravished Rose from himself, they did it at a
distance, for I had not worn them since that day.--You needn't look.
Thales imagined amber had a spirit; and Pliny says it is a counter-charm
for sorceries. There are a great many mysterious things in the world.
Aren't there any hidden relations between us and certain substances?
Will you tell me something impossible?--But he came and went about
Louise, and she sung his songs, and all was going finely again, when we
gave our midsummer party.

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