The casino in Monte Carlo is a very important, strikingly serious institution. Few official buildings in Europe are as magnificent. As a building of its kind it is unique. People are used to losing their money in ramshackle wooden and iron buildings propped up by cardboard columns. The casino has marble columns; its rooms are severe and imposing in the best bourgeois traditions. You are inside now. A huge, opaque room opens up before you. Twelve large tables enter your purview: six roulette and six baccarat. Each is surrounded by a buzz that is drowned by the cheeky clatter of the chips and the hopping of that devilish little ball. Everybody is speaking in hushed tones as if they were embarrassed. If you are alert, now and then you will hear a sigh escape that someone was unable to suppress. It’s one way of showing you have arrived. The first hundred francs are the worst.
First surprise: women are undoubtedly in the majority. Generally they are quite mature women with a sternly respectable demeanor. Almost all play scientifically, that is, clutching a card and a pencil. They conduct complicated, cabalistic exercises on paper. Once that’s completed they lay their bet with deep conviction and a confidence that is disconcerting. It is amazing how many people think that losing at roulette is down to the player’s lack of ability. People imagine that the mysteries of chance can be tamed by studying higher mathematics, calculating probabilities, or sharpening one’s natural wit. Everyone has their formula, their brilliant trick to guarantee a win. Ninety-five percent of the people crowding into Monte Carlo are in the grip of the most amusing superstitions. People often defend their childish beliefs stubbornly and take stands that are grotesque in the extreme.
“Now it will be the red five,” you hear them whisper, in front of you, with professorial, academic circumspection.
It’s a black seven. Brief consternation. The gambler consults her papers. Adds up, takes away, multiplies, subtracts, square roots. Roulette is a mathematical progression. Pascal, ladies and gentlemen, the distinguished Reverend Pascal, knew about all that. The time comes to make a decision. They adopt a serious, elegant pose.
“It will be the red twenty-four. It can’t fail …”
It’s a zero as round as a watermelon. The cycle of movements is repeated indefinitely. Chance slithers like a snake. They don’t get a single one right. Pockets spew out papers covered in figures and projections. Hands quiver. Noses elongate absurdly. Sad eyes look at the croupier as if to say: “What did I do to be treated so badly?”
The ball jumps joyfully over metal. The yellow, green, red, white chips soften in the diffuse, matte light. The croupier solemnly tweaks his mustache. Jam seems to be trickling down the long faces of the gamblers. There is a dull buzz, like an angry bumblebee’s, in the large room. Chance under pressure stutters like a distant engine. Painted in nineteenth-century style, the ceiling is an allegory with rather faded nymphs representing Agriculture, Industry, Commerce, Science, and the Arts. A severe matriarch, seated on a cloud — plump bosom and bottom — presides over the symbolic, Olympian dance. This matriarch represents natural order in the style of liberal, evolutionary philosophy. She is Mrs Stuart Mill. The croupier is still twirling his mustache. The ball leaps over the metal. The men with the rakes stand to attention, waiting for the moment to make their move. Finally, the scientific gambler wearily leaves the table with a bitter, knowing expression, grasping papers and projections.
This roulette wheel is fixed, she thinks.
In Barcelona our chemistry lecturer who was naïve enough to predict the color of the reaction in process frequently put his foot in it. If he said green, it would inevitably come out white or black. The students gave him standing ovations.
“It was slightly black,” the poor man would say, trembling like a tree leaf. “Next year, God willing, it will work out better …”
So too hopes the roulette player and in general the savvy gambler. “Next year, God willing, it will work out better. This year it was slightly black. I can’t complain,” says the gambler who inevitably loses. If the world is six million years old, this show has been running for six thousand years — in round numbers. And won’t it run and run!
I’m reading a journal, sitting on a willow chair between two palm trees with the sun on my back.
“What are you reading? What are you reading?” asks a nosy Barcelonan I’ve met by chance.
“La Revue de Monte Carlo?”
“That must be full of saucy comedy?”
“Not at all! It is a scientific journal.”
And that’s the truth. Everybody who knows La Revue de Monte Carlo must have noticed the secondary title, according to which the publication is a scientific journal. It is printed under a dedication to Napoleon I, whose maxim is quoted: “Calculation will win the game.” A lovely, enthusiastic, optimistic maxim, worthy of a great general! A maxim to bear in mind when educating young people! It is from his Memoirs of Saint Helena and is one of those declarations that give testimony to the depth of thought of that hero who fought so many famous battles. Such a pity his dictum is expressed in the form of a prophecy.
This scientific journal comes out every Sunday in winter and once a month in summer, and contains, apart from the real timetable for roulette and trente et quarante, a profound study of the games played and unpublished methods. The frontispiece carries a wheel of fortune that superimposes the elements that make up a roulette wheel under a photograph of the majestic casino, framed by palm trees and more or less tropical plants. The journal has been going for twenty-three years and vast numbers have been published. J. de Suresnes, the editor-in-chief, must be pleased. On the second page, the journal advertises a “Theoretical-Practical Treatise on the Interesting Game of Trente et quarante.” One regrets, however, that the same page carries a shamelessly sentimental advert that ruins the healthy drift of the first: “Madame Maxima gives the best prices for jewels and furs,” goes its slogan. The first thought that comes to mind is that Madame Maxima could very well be the wife of Monsieur Suresne. That would explain the juxtaposition of the two adverts.
The journal comprises two parts: statistics and wonders. The pages devoted to the former carry the numbers that have won in the gaming room during the previous week. This list includes, moreover, an indication as to the reds and blacks, evens and odds, dozens of losses and infringements — generally every feature of the games played. These statistics are rather tiresome and of little interest to the layman. Connoisseurs, however, must find these numbers a pure joy. They bother to assemble these statistics in order to invite the public as a whole to put into practice Napoleon the First’s advice: “Calculation will win the game.” Calculate, citizens, calculate! Calculate until your eyes droop. After all, while you are calculating, you’re not hurting anyone.
The wonders are wondrous. The main dish comprises a scientific article that is usually incomprehensible to people with a scant mathematical background. Algebra and calculation sing there like birds on the Rambla at twilight. Between formulas you find the odd observation of a very basic psychological nature. La Revue de Monte Carlo invites its readers to keep calm and collected. In the magazine, calm is the unknown quantity implicit in the higher mathematics of the locality. It’s what is demonstrated in a book by an anonymous author entitled Games of Chance Won With Sangfroid, in French and English. “This serious publication,” says the book’s author in a candid moment, “should be in the hands of every gambler who wishes to apply a method or system with calm and moderation without which all possibility of winning vanishes.” The article is padded out with a third element: the statement the author repeatedly makes in respect to the serious nature, the notoriously scientific character of his research. You feel like exclaiming: “Well, well! Let’s do it! All you need is …”