midday
`` We had no money , but we staked largely , in the shape of a wager , upon the success of one of the players ; we knew not , or cared not , for the consequence , if we had lost ; but , as it happened , we were largely successful , and beggars as we had walked into that place , we might have left it independent men . `` But when does the gambler know when to pause in his career ? If defeat awakens all the raging passions of humanity within his bosom , success but feeds the great vice that has been there engendered . To the dawn of morn we played ; the bright sun shone in , and yet we played -- the midday came , and went -- the stimulant of wine supported us , and still we played ; then came the shadows of evening , stealing on in all their beauty . But what were they to us , amid those mutations of fortune , which , at one moment , made us princes , and placed palaces at our control , and , at another , debased us below the veriest beggar , that craves the stinted alms of charity from door to door . `` And there was one man who , from the first to the last , stayed by us like a very fiend ; more than man , I thought he was not human . We won of all , but of him .