In this place, where the gambling fever
was pulsing in the sunshine, such announcements were sure to raise a
prolonged muttering sound.
"They ARE funny!" murmured Nana, greatly entertained.
"Their features look as if they had been put on the wrong way. Just you
see that big fellow there; I shouldn't care to meet him all alone in the
middle of a wood."
But Vandeuvres pointed her out a bookmaker, once a shopman in a fancy
repository, who had made three million francs in two years. He was
slight of build, delicate and fair, and people all round him treated him
with great respect. They smiled when they addressed him, while others
took up positions close by in order to catch a glimpse of him.
They were at length leaving the ring when Vandeuvres nodded slightly to
another bookmaker, who thereupon ventured to call him. It was one of his
former coachmen, an enormous fellow with the shoulders of an ox and a
high color. Now that he was trying his fortunes at race meetings on the
strength of some mysteriously obtained capital, the count was doing his
utmost to push him, confiding to him his secret bets and treating him on
all occasions as a servant to whom one shows one's true character.
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