And from that very evening when he took in with Fedotka, he began to play for money all the time. Formerly he didn’t care to play for stakes, either for a dinner or for champagne. Sometimes the prince would say⁠—

“Let’s play for a bottle of champagne.”

“No,” he would say. “Let us rather have the wine by itself. Hollo there! bring a bottle!”

And now he began to play for money all the time; he used to spend his entire days in our establishment. He would either play with someone in the billiard-room, or he would go “upstairs.”

Well, thinks I to myself, everyone else gets something from him, why don’t I get some advantage out of it?

“Well, sir,” says I one day, “it’s a long time since you have had a game with me.”

And so we began to play. Well, when I won ten half-rubles of him, I says⁠—