There has been a great deal of excitement here for the past two days on the result of a gambling quarrel. An English gentleman, a fine, gay, noble-looking fellow, whom I have often met at parties, and admired for his strikingly winning and elegant manners, lost fifty thousand francs on Thursday night at cards. The Count St. Leon was the winner. It appears that Hesse, the Englishman, had drank freely before sitting down to play, and the next morning his friend, who had bet upon the game, persuaded him that there had been some unfairness on the part of his opponent. He refused consequently to pay the debt, and charged the Frenchman, and another gentleman who backed him, with deception. The result was a couple of challenges, which were both accepted. Hesse fought the Count on Friday, and was dangerously wounded at the first fire. His friend fought on Saturday (yesterday), and is reported to be mortally wounded. It is a little remarkable that both the _losers_ are shot, and still more remarkable, that Hesse should have been, as he was known to be, a natural son of George the Fourth; and Count Leon, as was equally well known, a natural son of Bonaparte!
Everybody gambles in Paris. I had no idea that so desperate a vice could be so universal, and so little deprecated as it is. The gambling-houses are as open and as ordinary a resort as any public promenade, and one may haunt them with as little danger to his reputation. To dine from six to eight, gamble from eight to ten, go to a ball, and return to gamble till morning, is as common a routine for married men and bachelors both, as a system of dress, and as little commented on. I sometimes stroll into the card-room at a party, but I can not get accustomed to the sight of ladies losing or winning money. Almost all Frenchwomen, who are too old to dance, play at parties; and their daughters and husbands watch the game as unconcernedly as if they were turning over prints. I have seen English ladies play, but with less philosophy. They do not lose their money gayly. It is a great spoiler of beauty, the vexation of a loss. I think I never could respect a woman upon whose face I had remarked the shade I often see at an English card-table. It is certain that vice walks abroad in Paris, in many a shape that would seem, to an American eye, to show the fiend too openly. I am not over particular, I think, but I would as soon expose a child to the plague as give either son or daughter a free rein for a year in Paris.