I stood, on this particular afternoon, just opposite a young man seated at one of the rouge et noir tables.  As my glance wandered from face to face among the players, it was arrested by his,—­a singularly pallid, thin, eager face; remarkably eager, even in such a place and in such company as this.  He seemed about twenty-five, but he had the bowed and shrunken look of an invalid, and from time to time he coughed terribly, the ominous cough of a person with lungs half consumed by tubercle.  He had not the air of a man who gambles for pleasure; nor, I thought, that of a spendthrift or a “ne’er-do-weel;” disease, not dissipation, had hollowed his cheeks and set his hands trembling, and the unnatural light in his eyes was born of fever rather than of greed.  He played anxiously but not excitedly, seldom venturing on a heavy stake, and watching the game with an intentness which no incident diverted.  Suddenly I saw a young girl make her way through the throng towards him.  She was plainly dressed, and had a sweet, sad face and eyes full of tenderness.  She touched him on the shoulder, stooped over him, and kissed him in the frankest, simplest manner possible on the forehead.  “Viens,” she whispered, “je m’etouffe ici, il fait si frais dehors; sortons.”  He did not answer; his eyes were on the cards.  “Rouge perd, et la couleur,” said the hard official voice.

With a sigh, he rose, coughed, passed his hand over his eyes, and took his wife’s arm.—­(I felt sure she was his wife.) They passed slowly through the rooms together, and I lost sight of them.  But not of his face—­nor of hers.  Sitting by the fountain outside the gaming saloons half an hour afterwards, I fell to musing about this strange couple.  So young,—­she scarcely more than a child, and he so ill and wasted!  He had played with the manner of an old habitue, and she seemed used to finding him at the tables and leading him away.  I made up my mind that I had stumbled on a romance, and resolved to hunt it down.  At the table d’hote dinner in my hotel that evening I met a friend from Nice to whom I confided my curiosity.  “I know,” said he, “the young people of whom you speak; they are patients of Dr S. of Monaco, one of my most intimate acquaintances.  He told me their story.”  “They,” I interpolated,—­” is the wife, then, also ill?” My friend smiled a little.  “Not ill exactly, perhaps,” he answered.  “But you must have seen,—­she will very shortly be a mother.  And she is very young and delicate.”  “Tell me their story,” I said, “since you know it.  It is romantic, I am certain.”  “It is sad,” he said, “and sadness suffices, I suppose, to constitute romance.  The young man’s name is Georges Saint-Cyr, and his family were `poor relations’ of an aristocratic house.  I say `were,’ because they are all dead,—­ his father, mother, and three sisters.  The father died of tubercle, so did his daughters; the son,