A Parisian Gamester.

Te Aroha News, Volume VI, Issue 302, 26 September 1888, Page 6

A Parisian Gamester.

One of the best-1? nown figures at the bac carat-table of a famous Paris club (says the correspondent of the ' Daijy Telegraph ') has just passed away in the person of Baron de Bastart. He was sixty years old, and had spent the greater part of his life in gambling. Every afternoon at four o'clock the baron wenu punctually to his club, and played steadily until six o'clock on the following morning, with but brief intervals for dinner and supper. One would think that a man who gambled so steadily and persistently should sometimes rake in some considerable sums ; but, strange to relate, the Baron was never known to win. He was very wealthy, owing to lucky mining speculations, and did not know the extent of his means. His passion for play and his extraordinary ill-luck made the fortune of his club, as well as of the deceives who frequented it, and whose favourite expression when going to take a hand with the opulent but unlucky gambler was that they were 'about to milk the cow.' Sometimes the Baron, after having been beaten over and over again and fleeced out of small fortunes, would insist upon continuing the game when his victorious opponents were tired out and wanted to spend some of their winnings on a nocturnal noce. In this frame of mind M. de Bastart would run afcer his friends and implore them to stay just for another hand. His pressing invitations were seldom refused, and those who divested themselves of their overcoats and returned with him to the ' green-tables ' were never sorry for having remained with the venerable gambler until the morning broke. The Baron was Sub-Prefect of Morlaix in Brittany when a young man. That was in the days of the Empire and when the Italian campaign was in progress. M. de Bastart was in his club in Paris comfortably ensconced before the baccarat-table when the conclusion of peace at Villafranco was announced. His duty was to return to Morlaix at once, in order to giye directions for the promulgation of the news by official posters through the department; but M. de Bastart calmly went on with his baccarat, and did not return to Morlaix for a month. On arriving at his office in the town he found a heap of the official placards on the table unopened arid by their side was a letter from the Ministry of the Interior dismissing him from his post. The Baron simply buttoned up his coat and returned to Paris and his club by the first train. Since that time he wap never heard of in official life, and when conversing on the peremptory character of his dismissal with friends he used to say that the peasants around Morlaix knew as much .about Villafranco as they did of Timbuctoo, and that all the official posters in the world would never have got into their heads what was meant by a ' Treaty of Peace.'