A mania for high gambling is reigning in Vienna, and
as usual the most extraordinary stories are in circulation. It is asserted, for instance, that Count Potocki lost in one evening £90,000, and had, though one of the richest landowners in Russia, to ask his opponent for three months' grace in which to raise the money on his estates. We will not say the story is impossible, for Count Cavour once staked the whole of his property, never very large, upon a game—some variety of brag—but it is exceedingly improbable. The tendency to exaggerate gambling losses is invincible, and is all the more odd because one never hears of the people so suddenly enriched. In this country noble after noble has been ruined by gambling, but it has been by continuous and protracted devo- tion to play, not by coups, which require that two or more men should be insane at the same moment and the same table.
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