By the time my host and I sat down, we were old and perfect friends. We ate, we drank an inordinate quantity of wines and, no less remarkably, after some hours I sensed I was no more drunk than he. Meanwhile, bouts of that superhuman pleasure, gambling, had punctuated our libations, and I confess I staked my soul in a best-of-three, and lost with heroic and breezy unconcern. The soul is such an intangible thing, often of no benefit, occasionally a major encumbrance, that the loss of it stirred in me less emotion than if, out walking, I had mislaid a calling card.