Only each year the period intervening between the surrender of the
tickets and the announcement of the lottery brought an increasing agony.
Each time as the Comte saw the precious slips finally depart in the
hands of the maid-of-all-work, he was convinced that at last the laws of
probability must fructify. Each year he found a new meaning in the
cabalistic mysteries of numbers. The eighteenth attempt, multiplied by
three, gave fifty-four, his age. Success was inevitable: nineteen, a
number indivisible and chaste above all others, seemed specially
designated. In a word, the Comte suffered during these periods as only a
gambler of the fourth generation is able to suffer.
At present the number twenty appeared to him to have properties no
other number had possessed, especially in the reappearance of the zero,
a figure which peculiarly attracted him by its symmetry. His despair was
consequently unlimited.
Ordinarily the news of the lottery arrived by an inspector of roads, who
passed through Keragouil a week or so after the announcement in the
press; for the Comte, having surrendered his ticket, was only troubled
lest he had won.
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