Year: 1864

1t so happened that I was stopping one
autumn at Wiesbaden very late in the
season. 1t was getting cold and damp
and cheerlesS, and the company was dis
appearing rapidly. Toe fishes in the
kursaal Garden waters must have been
wondering at the in'eririttence of the mi
raculous supply Of crumbs with which
they were daily provided by unknown
hands. The shops under the arcade were
encumbered with packing. boxes, and'the
shutters were making their a pearance
in front of the stores, where the smartrst
of young ladies used to dispense the most
motley collection of pipes and braces and
Bohemian glass; the croupicrS were to be
seen a unusual hours lettering about the
corridors, in default Of employment at the
half-desertcd tables; and the bank was
beginning TO reckon up its annual profits
with great satisfaction to the fortunate
proprietors. At this fag,end of the sea
son there appeared pair Of gamblers,
who Immediately becams the talk of the
place. They were come with the avowed
design Of breaking the bank when its cof.
ters were supposed TO be at the fullest
y stranger pain never witnessed. Faust
and Mephistophelcs were the names that
we, Old habitHeS of the place, baptized
them with /; and TO what names they an.
swered in real life, or what position they
occupied, We were never able to ascertain


Faust was n man Of immense bulk and
sire, and looked something like cross
between Manchester brtting man and a
Belgian brewer. His linen was Of the
dirtiest, and his huge hands were even
dirtier than the fragment Of shirt display


ed about his bull-neck. His great gold
chain and the diamond rings on his fat
fingers bespoke wealth strangely at va


rance with the slovcnlineSs Of his dress.
However, there could be no question
about the fact Of his wealth, though there
might bc about its origin. He carried
with him on all occasions an Immense
greasy pocket book, fastened with an In
dia rubber band, and literally bursting
with bank-notes lie was said to have
brought FIVE hundred thousand francs
with him; and from what ] saw bin lose.
have little doubt he might well have
had hail that amount. Mephistophclcs,
on the other hand, could hnvc been
bought UP bodily, to say nothing Of his
soul, for half guinea; be was little old
Jew, who might have been Of any age
between (ifty and hundred. His thread,
bare clothes stuck 50 close to him that
you felt convinced that if he ever took
them of, which he had obviously not
done for weeks, he would never get them
on again. His nose was the most hooked
and his eyes the Sharpcst that ever saw;
his hands, too, were the very pattern of a
vultures talonS, Apparently, his sole
possessions in the world were a long, tat.
tered notebook, filled with elaborate cal.
culations Of chances, and the confidence
of Faust. In fact, in the partnership en-
tered into between the two, Faust sup
piled the capital and Mephistopheles the
intellect. The plan on which the firm in
tended to operate may be understood
even by persons unacquainted with any
game Of hazard.


There are an equal amount Of odd and
even numbers on a roulette board, and,
therefore, in the long run, the odd or even
numbers turn up one as often as the 9TH
er. Now, supposing you put sovereign
on the odd numbers and lose it, you
would then, according to the Mephisto-
phelan system, stake two sovereigns on
the same numbers. If you lose them,
you stake fonr, and so go on doubling TILL
an odd number turns up. Whenever
this event happens, the difference between