it is natural to suppose that he attained a much
greater skill in the use of these articles than men can possess who only
occasionally handle them. To use a cue at billiards well is like using a pencil,
or a German flute, or a small-sword: you cannot master any one of these
implements at first, and it is only by repeated study and perseverance, joined
to a natural taste, that a man can excel in the handling of either. Now Crawley,
from being only a brilliant amateur, had grown to be a consummate master of
billiards. Like a great general, his genius used to rise with the danger; and
when the luck had been unfavourable to him for a whole game, and the bets were
consequently against him, he would, with consummate skill and boldness, make
some prodigious hits which would restore the battle, and come in a victor at the
end, to the astonishment of everybody - of everybody, that is, who was a
stranger to his play. Those who were accustomed to see it were cautious how they
staked their money against a man of such sudden resources and brilliant and
overpowering skill.
    At games of cards he was equally skilful; for though he would constantly
lose money at the commencement of an evening, playing so carelessly and making
such blunders that new-comers were often inclined to think meanly of his talent,
yet when roused to action, and awakened to caution by repeated small losses, it
was remarked that Crawley's play became quite different, and that he was pretty
sure of beating his enemy thoroughly before the night was over. Indeed, very few
men could say that they ever had the better of him.
    His successes were so repeated that no wonder the envious and the vanquished
spoke sometimes with bitterness regarding them. And as the French say of the
Duke of Wellington, who never suffered a defeat, that only an astonishing series
of lucky accidents enabled him to be an invariable winner - yet even they allow
that he cheated at Waterloo, and was enabled to win the last great trick - so it
was hinted at headquarters in England that some foul play must have taken place
in order to account for the continued successes of Colonel Crawley.
    Though Frascati's and the Salon were open at that time in Paris, the mania
for play was so widely spread that the public gambling-rooms did not suffice for
the general ardour, and gambling went on in private houses as much as if there
had been no public means for gratifying the passion. At Crawley's charming
little réunions of an evening this fatal amusement commonly was