Savannah morning news. [volume] (Savannah) 1868-1887, 1884-03-30
PARIS CLUB SCANDAL.
RADICAL EDITORS BOUND THAT
1T SHALL BE WE'LL AIRED.

Wharf.-The Shams of Life.
Correspondence of the Morning Ee,cs.
PARIS, March 12.-The card-cheating
scandal in the crack and aristocratic club
of the Rue Royale is not likely to end in
smoke. The Radical journals, having
scented that efforts were being made to
hush the matter up, insist that it shall be
probed to the bottom and exposed as if
vulgar case of card sharping. The club,
which is the headquarters of the creme de
Ia creme of monarchy, is in a fix. On the
first spur of the moment, it called in the
police authorities, who at once sealed up
the books and archives of the club. Now
that the matter is drifting into party
politics these records may become incon-
venient.
But there is yet another ugly side. The
clerk of the play-rOom, MOnvoisin, with
whom was found stocks of marked cards,
that he duly passed to those black-leg
members Of the club associated with his
dishonesty, is still under preventive ar
rest. He has maintained an attitude Of
mutism worthy of a trappist; low diet,
the solitary cell, and deprivation of smOk-
ing materials commence to tell on his no
surrender resolutions. He is a long
headed fellow; he has lodged with his half
brother at Geneva. the SWISS correspond
ent for an extreme republican journal,
vouchers of the moneys passed at play,
with copies Of the betting notes by the
members and a diary OF their manners
and customs at the club in question. He
has laid in similar materials respecting
the other chief clubs where he was clerk
and banker to the play-rOOm. And all the
documents are to be published.
If THE TRUTH BE TOLD,
there is not much pity felt for the coming
troubles. | do not refer to the political
JOY it will afford the adversaries of the
mOnarchistS and high society, but there
is a latent and deep feeling abroad that
something ought to be done to check the
vice of gaming. We only know the
misery it causes by the cases of ruin that
become public, but the wreckng in Dri-
vate-LO meet debts of honor and save the
family name--is terrible. The weekly
corpses that strew the precincts of Mon
AGO do not renreSent all the victims of
rouge et HOlT, Of tre1tte et qadrdnte. There
are few fathers with sons but in their
hearts would be delighted to see the clubs
deprived of their police license for gam
bling.
1t has been observed that play has been
invented only for imbeciles and knaYes,
and that 1t is the fruit of ayarice and
eRnai. 1t steals three good things, says a
prOyerb: Time, money and conscience.
These remarks only apply to where play
becomes gambling. passion, profess
sion, and, as here, a source of income.
Play more or less brings, by mental labor,
blood to the head; now that cannot be
pleasure or amusement which engenders
fatigue. When the end of play is not
amour prOpre but gain. the passion extin-
guishes every generous aspiration. To
ruin one or several individuals cannot be
amusement. No gambler is said to be
happy; none remain rich after having
gained. Waterloo treadS on AusterlitZ.
They are the weak and hesitating who
gamble and suffer; the strOng-minded
man avoids play; the gangrened gambler
seeks his mania everywhere. Gambling
cannot be abolished, but it can be cur
tailed; it will exist, because the product
of human aYidity and legerity.
There are plenty of games to amuse or
to inVigOrate. The Lydlans bequeathed
us lawn tennis, or racket. Nausicaa and
her maids, after washing the linen and
spreading it on the grass, played with
balls to the sound of music. The En-
peTors of Rome enjoyed rackets to get up
an appetite. Julius Canius, condemned
to death by Tiberius, spent the last ten
days of his life playing draughts, and
called the eXecutlOner to witness he had
won the game. Caligula, like Claudius,
loved thimbes, but when he lost, he Or
dered some knights to be killed, and, TAX
ing their property, so p@id his debts. The
Greeks, before Uneir conquest by Rome,
were passionately addicted to play.
During the reign of Charlemagne, it
was prohibited to play games of chance
under penalty of being deprived from as
sOciating with the faithful. st. Louis
81 t1I1oraI nj NJ M nlDu
board ship, returning from Palestine, he
detected his brother, the Con1te PAujOn,
at thimbes; he seized them and threw
them into the sea. Louis XIII. closed
fOrty-seyen bells in Paris, and the Parla-
ment of 1861 prohibited games of chance
under penalties varying from %, 900 to TO-
600 francs. But ii was under Louis XIV.
that gambling at Versailles flourished as
an Institution. Grand ladies made for
tunes in that way at the expense of His
Majesty. The CheYalier de GrammOnt
was an elegant cheater, and the Due
d'Antin openly stole the stakes of his
neighbOrs. With Louis Ky. the hells be-
came gorgeous; that kept by Madame de
Saint Amarante had the Due d. Orleans
philippe Egalite) for habItue.
With the arrival of the revolution
gambling turned to mania with rich ana
poor. Men sat on stools in the streets
=
There were hells for all classes and purses.
The house on the Boulevard des
Italiens, the Pavilion de Hanovre, that
every visitor knows, was a gambling
palace kept by the notorious Madame Le-
cour. The beggars had their special hell
at Is rue Richelieu, but the pool there
was limited to six farthings. Madame
Lecour made 1900 fir. a year alone by the
sale of the cards thrown on the floor after
oh 10 !.
paid his debts by his winnings at her
house, and his colleague from Sweden OBJ
tanned there his income. Under the
empire the number of hells were limited
and tarmed. Fouche gave one to his spy
Perrin so as to entice foreigners. FOuche
in return received every morning Il roll Of
fifty louis from this house. Louis Phil
ippe suppressed all the bells at the close
of 1887; at that period the city budget real
lied from five to six million francs by
farming the bells and which helped to
pay the subsidies TO the theatres,
THE FRENCH ARE IRRITATED
at the slOwness of the operations at Bac-
mini and the resistance of the Chinese.
This feeling is aggravated by the successes
military and diplOmatic-of perfde Al
6iOR in Egypt. They will never forgive
the Mahdi if he ceases from troubling. NJ.
lAGudil OCnluudo luOnG1 W tACbGlN VIC LLG
stone-records on the Nile.
He heads no list himself. The appeal has
fallen as fiat as that made for sinews Of
war for the False Prophet. When the
chemist, LaYoisier, was condemned to be
guillotned for preparing his own snuff,
the petitioners for his life were informed,
''The Republic had no need of chemists"
The French can do without megaliths; be-
sides, they have their supply of obelisk.
France is put to the PIN of her collar to
make the two ends meet. The Ministers
have at last become ferocious in refusing
new credits, or indulging in fresh ex-
and Madagascar eX-
cepted. The Exchange or money market,
once so omnipOtent, has become a thing
of the past; worse, the glory that has de-
parted has settled down on Berlin, to say
nothing of London or New York.
The agitation for the expulsion of the
Orleanist Princes is between smOuldering
and revival. The Count de Paris, it APP
pears, sees too many friends. The Due de
Aumale gives too many dinners. Paul de
Cassagnac announces that he retires like
Achilles to his tent. Bonapartism is dead
so long as Prince Napoleon lives. The
latter in adopting legal agitation instead
of Boulogne expeditions and cOups d.
etat has relegated to the Greek Kalends the
restoration of the empire. The dyna-
miters are busy at Lyons and Auzn. The