When I hear the cries of the croupiers – ‘Trente-et-un rouge, impair et passe’. ‘Quatre, noir, pair et manque’ it’s with a sort of apprehension, a sort of sinking feeling in my heart. How greedily I look at the gaming table, with its scattered louis d’or, gold friedrichs and thalers, at the streams of gold as they pour from the croupier’s hands and pile up into heaps of gold that flash like fire, at the rolls of silver lying around the wheel. Even two rooms away, I can hear the chink of that money, so much so that I almost go into convulsions.
Fyodor Dostoevsky, “The Gambler”, 1866
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