Chapter XVII

After a year and eight months, Alexis reopens his notes, admitting that he is worse off than ever. He recalls leaving for Homburg with hope, but since then he has been imprisoned for debt, mysteriously bailed out, and forced to serve as secretary and then valet to a Privy Councillor, Heintze, in Baden.

Saving seventy gulden, Alexis resigns and returns to roulette. A daring sequence begins with a hit on zero and swift wins up to seventeen hundred gulden, which briefly restores his pride. The next morning, careless stakes cost him fifteen hundred florins, yet he moves on to Homburg and spends a month there betting small, studying the tables, and living in anxiety.

During a walk, Alexis encounters Mr. Astley. Astley says he knows Alexis’s last twenty months and questions whether Alexis will ever quit gambling. Stung, Alexis asks about Polina. After warning him off insinuations, Astley discloses that Polina was ill, stayed with his family in England, and inherited seven thousand pounds after her grandmother died; her younger siblings were also provided for.

Astley adds that the General died in Paris the previous month and that Blanche secured his funds. He does not know De Griers’s whereabouts and rebukes Alexis’s cynicism. Crucially, Astley reveals that Polina once loved Alexis and sent Astley to see him and report on his state, but judges Alexis now “utterly lost.” He gives Alexis ten louis d’or—refusing more since Alexis would gamble it away—and they part amicably.

Alone, Alexis disputes Astley’s view of Russians yet admits words are useless without action. He fixates on “tomorrow,” imagining a cautious, patient comeback, recalling a past last-coin reversal at Roulettenberg. Still, he senses his nature will betray him, even as he vows that tomorrow will end this misery.