I care not what, you wish to stake your money on the arithmetical signification of the occurrence.  You will have no difficulty in discovering a lottery-office; in well nigh every street there are one or more “Prenditoria di Lotti.”  In fact, begging and gambling are the only two trades that thrive in Rome, or are pushed with enterprise or energy.  When the drawing takes place in Tuscany, the result is communicated at once by the electric telegraph, a fact unparalleled in any other branch of Roman business.  Over each office are placed the Papal arms, the cross keys of St Peter and the tiara.  Outside their aspects differ, according to the quarter of the city.  In the well-to-do streets, if such an appellation applied to any street here be not an absurdity, the exterior of the lottery-offices are neat but not gaudy.  A notice, printed in large black letters on a white placard, that this week the lottery will be drawn for in Rome, or where-ever it may be, and a simple glass frame over the door, in which are slid the winning numbers of last week, form the whole outward adornment.  In the poor and populous parts the lotteries flaunt out in all kinds of shabby finery:  the walls about the door are pasted over with puffing inscriptions; from stands in front of the shop flutter long stripes of parti-coloured paper, inscribed with all sorts of cabalistic figures.  If you like you may try the “Terno della fortuna,” which is certain, morally, to turn up this week or next.  If you are of a philosophical disposition, you may stake your luck on the numbers 19 and 42, which have not been drawn for ever so long a time, and must therefore be drawn sooner—­or later; or if you like to cast in your lot with others, you may back that “ambo” which has “sold” marked against it; at any rate, you will not be the only fool who stands to lose or win on that chance, which, after all, is some slight consolation.  If none of these inducements are sufficient, you may fix on your choice by spinning round the index on the painted dial-plate, and choosing the numbers opposite to which the spin stops, thus making chance determine chance.  Having, at last, selected your combination somehow or other, you enter the office with something of that shamefaced feeling which, I suppose, a man must be conscious of the first time that he ever enters the back-door of a pawnbroker’s establishment.

The interior of these offices is the same throughout.  A low, dark room, with a long ink-stained desk at one side, behind which, pen in ear, is seated an official, more grimy even, and more snuffy than the run of his tribe.  Opposite the desk there is sure to be a picture of the Madonna with a small glass lamp before it, wherein a feeble wick floats and flickers in a pool of rancid oil.  On the wall you may read a list of the virtuous maidens who are to receive marriage portions of from 5 pounds downwards, on the occasion of the lottery being drawn at some religious festival.  Indeed, throughout, the lottery is