Black coat employees opened one of the screens, to greet the prince as an old acquaintance.

It was the first time I went into the gambling halls after his return. He thought he was down with miraculous regression in the world before the war, that all things were afflicted humanity on the other side of the door, as is a dramatic, false but exciting, the scene of an abandoned theater.

Even found a certain charm in the architecture of these rooms, being somewhat familiar pleasant times reminding him of their existence.

I was in the room of the Renaissance, but his attention was drawn to the next room, the central rotunda of the Casino, the so-called salon Schmit, to which converge the other rooms and appears below the extended cover to the bottom of dividing building.

A noisy silence arose from human agglomerations around the green tables. All they did when speaking softly, like a church. Occasionally, this whisper was cut with a long grating, with a noise equal to a coast pebbles carried by the wave. Rackets were employees, who swept the green cloth, taking coins, tokens, all the spoils of the loss, hitting each other pieces of metal and faux bone. The voice of the croupiers rose above this bustling hive feverish silence as the officer commanding a maneuver. “Make your games …” “Is the game is made ?…»” No more. “Silence noisy lose its envelope, it was thinning. The breasts breathe with less force, stretched their necks to see better neighbor on the shoulder, with some women stayed on one foot around, throwing back the other as dancers who are inclined to touch the floor with your hands. All crowded, regardless of the sex to which he belonged immediately meats, and in this pause for long faces, furrowed brows, mouths and eyes converging sounded stiff, augmented by an evil echo the patter of the ivory ball in the slot circular edge of wood, while the pink color of the wheel was spinning like a kaleidoscope in reverse.