You ask how a man can gamble away his last kopek. Let me tell you ... here people win tens of thousands just like that! Yes I came here hoping to save you all and to stave off misfortune ... And what’s more, when I got to Baden, I won 600 francs within a quarter of an hour. That whetted my appetite. Suddenly I started losing; I could no longer restrain myself and lost everything I had ... After paying the landlady ... I pawned my watch.”

– Dostoyevsky to his brother, 1863