Some one must have won the machine and
carried a party of his friends away, and triumphantly turned turtle with
it over the first of the precipices which abound at Monte Carlo. More
than the tables within this opportunity of fortune tempted me, and it
was only by the repeated recurrence to my principles that I was able to
get away alive. In spite of myself, I did not get away without, however
guiltlessly, having yielded to the spirit of the place. It was at the
Administrational Art Exhibition, where there were really some good
pictures, and where, on my entering, I was given a small brass disk. On
going out I attempted to restore this to the door-keeper, but he went
back with me to a certain piece of mechanism, where he instructed me to
put the disk into a slot. Then the disk ran its course, and a small
brass ball came out at the bottom. The door-keeper opened this, and
showed me that it was empty; but he gave me to understand that it might
have been full of diamonds, or rubies, or seed-pearls, which might have
implanted in me a lust of gambling I should never have overcome.
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