Chapter XXI (part 2)

The Magian arranges and directs the games as he likes; he awards the fines according to the nature of the faults, such as showing the cards to other players, biding them from the spectators, any indiscretion in the utterance of the oracles, reading oracles which are not justified by the cards, etc. 13. The spectators can join in the game until the Magian indicates that it will soon end, by saying in a quarter of an hour, or half an hour, the game will close. 14. If the Magian should forget to announce the coming end of the game, all the spectators have a right to share the fines, which are divided equally amongst all the players, when the expenses have been paid. THE UNITY OF GAMES. Is it not true that man has displayed more inventive faculties to satisfy his vices, than for anything, else? To convince ourselves of this fact we need only look at the innumerable inventions destined to aid him in losing the time which has been so parsimoniously dealt out to us all. But the human brain acts in accordance with a very small number of laws, and the inventor cannot escape from the effect of this rule. Look at the basis of most games, however they may differ in appearance. Is it not possible to find one single game, from which most of the others are derived? Follow me in thought, dear reader, over one of the high-roads of Spain or Italy, and let us ask some old Gypsy to leave her camp for a moment and tell our fortunes. Look at the strange cards she draws from her greasy bag: the Universe, the Sun, the Stars, Death, Fortune, Love, are only a few of the names of these eccentric figures, which depict the phases of our daily life with so much simplicity. What is this game? The Gypsy Tarot. It is composed of our cards with four additional figures called Knights, who are placed between the Queen and the Knave. But its originality lies in the twenty-two supplementary and symbolical figures. Each of them represents an image, a number, an idea. Court de Gébelin, a savant of the eighteenth century, has shown us that this game, as possessed by the Gypsies, is of Egyptian origin, that it also existed in China and India from the earliest antiquity, and we shall see that it is the father of most of the games now known. It is composed of numbers and figures, which mutually react upon and explain each other. But if we separate the figures and arrange them upon a paper in the form of a wheel, making the numbers move in the shape of dice, we produce the Goose game , with which Ulysses, according to Homer, practised cheating beneath the walls of Troy. If we fix the numbers upon alternate black and white squares, and allow the lesser figures of our game to move upon them--the King, Queen, Knight, Foolish Man or Knave, Tower or ace--we have the Game of Chess . In fact, the primitive chessboards bore numbers, and philosophers used them to solve problems of logic. If, leaving the figures on one side, we confine ourselves to the use of numbers, the Game of Dice appears, and if we weary of throwing the dice, we can mark the characters upon horizontal plates and create the Game of Dominoes . If the symbolical figures are in our way, we replace them by black and white draughts, and by using the numbers upon the dice we invent Backgammon , another combination of the Goose game . Chess degenerates in the same way into the Game of Draughts . Lastly, our pack of cards , instead of first appearing under Charles X, according to the common report, is of far older date.