If any trust may be reposed in the assertions of Captain Weihe, a German naval artillery officer who has resided at Monte Carlo for three seasons, the cases are far more numerous than is supposed. According to him, directly a man has shot or hung himself, he is whisked away by the police and the body concealed till it is ascertained that no one is particularly interested in his fate. Then, at the end of the season, the bodies of the suicides are packed in cases that are weighted, and the boatmen sink them far out at sea between Monte Carlo and Corsica.
According to the same authority, the bodies were formerly thrust into the holes and cracks in the limestone on which the Casino and the tributary buildings of Monte Carlo stand, but the condition in consequence became so insanitary that the place had to be cleared of them, and a large body of workmen was imported from Italy and employed on this work, and the corpses removed were disposed of at sea. Captain Weihe asserts as a matter of his own knowledge or observation that from the upper part of the rift of Pont Larousse, in 1898, sixty corpses, from the lower by Villa Eden ten or twelve were removed.
The game of roulette is composed of two distinct divisions, that of numbers and that of _cadres_. Upon the former it is possible for the player to win thirty-five times the value of his stake; but then, the bank has thirty-six chances against him. Upon the _cadres_ there is not so great a risk; for _rouge_ or _noir_, _pair_ or _impair_, _passe_ or _manque_, there are nearly the same chances for the players as there are for the bank; but then, on the other hand, the player can win no more than the value of his stake.
The bank, with the odds on zero, normally absorbs one-seventieth of all the money staked on each table during the course of the year; that would be against constant players with capital behind them equal to the bank; but the majority of players take a comparatively limited sum with them and play without a system, until it is lost, and then perforce stop; whereas if they had the bank’s unlimited time and capital, they would play, losing only one-seventieth of their stake on each coup, and prolong the time required to lose a given capital. This constant game of what would in America be called “freeze out,” enormously increases the bank’s chances over the calculable one-seventieths of the staker, and is doubtless the main cause of its large winnings. The _profits_ of the company were, in 1904, something like £1,250,000. This, at the calculable odds, would mean the staking during the year of the enormous sum of £87,500,000. But owing to the way the usual player stakes, as above described, probably a small fractional part of that sum would be sufficient to provide that amount of revenue. As M. Blanc was wont to say: “Rouge gagne quelque fois; noir aussi quelque fois—mais _Blanc_ toujours.”