- Pauline Ostrovsky: Oh, you can count on my vanity. No matter what you say I'll regard it as a compliment.
- Fedja: All right, if you insist. To one of the most corrupt women I've ever met.
- Pauline Ostrovsky: Corrupt?
- Fedja: Corrupt, confused, frustrated, and empty.
- Pauline Ostrovsky: But in a charming sort of way, you'll admit.
- Fedja: Well charm, my dear is your gambling capital. You toss it on the table like money, like everything else, even a dying grandmother.
- Pauline Ostrovsky: When a man takes the trouble to be so rude to a woman, he is usually falling in love with her.
- Fedja: You're not a woman. You are a symptom.
- Pauline Ostrovsky: Of what?
- Fedja: Of one of the worlds deadliest diseases, sophistication. More champagne?
- Pauline Ostrovsky: What else am I?
- Fedja: You are irritatingly beautiful.
- Pauline Ostrovsky: Well, at last!
- Fedja: And everything, I reject.
- Fedja: Where there is hate, give me love. Where there is darkness, give me light. Save me. Save me from the devil within me.
- Opening Title Card: The scene is a famous gambling resort in a peaceful and playful Europe. The time is the 1860s, when gaslight is young, décolletés are daring, but an ankle still a secret.
- Hotel Manager: Mademoiselle Pauline.
- Fedja: She's a dark young lady. Very beautiful.
- Hotel Manager: Exquisitely! Just go right up, sir. Walk in. I'm sure you won't regret it
- Doctor: Do you have these attacks often?
- Fedja: They come whenever I reach the bottom of my life.
- Doctor: Have you reached it now?
- Fedja: I was very near it, only the lowest ebb of human existence, as he hold out his hand to draw me up.
- Doctor: You were saying someone holds out his hand, who?
- Fedja: He who calls all sinners to him. Suddenly, in the blinding light, I see - him. The heart of everything.
- Fedja: On the brink of destruction, everyone sees him. Without him, I couldn't live, I couldn't work, I couldn't write, I'd be nothing. I'd be lost - in - darkness.
- Pauline Ostrovsky: Are you getting off here too?
- Fedja: No, Mademoiselle. I'm going to Paris.
- Pauline Ostrovsky: What a pity.
- Pauline Ostrovsky: I only cry when I'm happy.
- Fedja: Aren't you?
- Pauline Ostrovsky: You ask too many questions.
- Fedja: I thought you must like my looks.
- Pauline Ostrovsky: Well, some women might...
- Fedja: Or, perhaps, it might be my literary reputation.
- Pauline Ostrovsky: Once I did start to read one of your books.
- Fedja: I've started to write many of them and was never able to finish them either.
- Pauline Ostrovsky: Why not finish your next one with me? It'd make a wonderful last chapter.
- Fedja: Would you promise to read it?
- Pauline Ostrovsky: Naturally. I love gambling stories.
- Fedja: With me, writing it is living. I couldn't write a romance without - being in love. I couldn't write a gambling story, without becoming a gambler.
- Pauline Ostrovsky: What an alarming theory.
- Fedja: Shall we compromise on - a romance?
- Pauline Ostrovsky: To luck, our luck.
- Armand de Glasse: We sent you an invitation to the casino this afternoon.
- Fedja: Oh, yes, of course. You work for the casino.
- Pauline Ostrovsky: [laughs] Oh, that's wonderful! The casino works for *him*. Monsieur de Glasse is the bank in person. The only man in these parts who can't lose.
- Fedja: [voice over] It wasn't the game itself that captured my interests. It was the gamblers. The jovial kind with his confident cigar. The nervous one with the desperate cigarette, haunting the tables like a ghost in a graveyard where his luck lies buried. The money lenders, tireless little vultures, eyeing their prey with anticipation., driving their cut-throat bargains. And then those who have seen everything a thousand times before, the casino officials, aloof, indifferently watching their aging cavalier with his young Madamoiselle, a monocle and a décolleté, a banknote and a kiss. What is it, I ask myself, that makes these people so absorbed in this senseless game? I felt their fever in my own pulse. But, what caused it was a mystery to me. I couldn't resist the experiment.
- Aristide Pitard: If I had the money, I have no will power. And if I had the will power, I have no money.
- Grandmother Ostrovsky: Only beginners waste money on food. Money is but for one purpose, to buy a chance.
- Aristide Pitard: I've even run out of heartbreaking stories. I used to invent them by the dozen, to get money out of people.
- Fedja: In a way, I do the same thing. I'm a writer.
- Aristide Pitard: A pity. Words won't help me.
- Fedja: This is an unexpected pleasure. I was just worrying about your soul.
- Pauline Ostrovsky: Oh... I haven't any. Couldn't you tell?
- Fedja: No. That was my mistake, I suppose.
- Pauline Ostrovsky: I'm going to make a gambler of you.
- Fedja: I have another proposal. Let me make a woman out of you.
- Pauline Ostrovsky: Anything you like. Only, bring me luck.
- Fedja: I warn you, morality is contagious.
- Pauline Ostrovsky: So is vice. Gambling most of all! Now, we've both been warned.
- Pauline Ostrovsky: Take me for what I am.
- Fedja: Seriously, this interests me. Of all the sensations in the world, how did you happen to choose gambling?
- Pauline Ostrovsky: Gambling chose me.
- Pauline Ostrovsky: I find Armand extremely attractive.
- Fedja: What's so attractive about him?
- Pauline Ostrovsky: His money! The kind of money I love. It isn't earned, it's won.
- Pauline Ostrovsky: You don't approve of me, do you?
- Fedja: Does that matter?
- Pauline Ostrovsky: No. Not really.
- Pauline Ostrovsky: What else am I?
- Fedja: I'm beginning to think that you're a liar.
- [kiss]
- Pauline Ostrovsky: Thank you.
- Fedja: Yes, that's what you are. A liar. Even your wickedness is a fraud. There's a taste of honesty.
- Pauline Ostrovsky: Well, you're wrong...
- Fedja: Don't say it. A better way of telling the truth.
- [kiss]
- Fedja: You're up early.
- Pauline Ostrovsky: I was restless. After everything you told me, I had to get up and look for my soul.
- Fedja: I've just given you one.
- Pauline Ostrovsky: Thank you.
- Fedja: How's it feel to have it back?
- Pauline Ostrovsky: Well, it's a - rather confusing.
- Grandmother Ostrovsky: I can understand men liking gypsies, dancing, wine. At my wedding, they danced for three weeks. Some of the guests aren't sober yet. They had their pleasure. But, cards? They're for fortune tellers.
- Fedja: I beat the devil at his own game. The devil's not a very good loser. We ought to be humble and pray.
- Fedja: I made an interesting discovery. There are strange ties between people and numbers. My lucky numbers, for instance, all added up to 8. Like 17, my favorite, 7 and 1 are 8. Or, 26, 6 and 2 are 8. Or, 35, 3 and 5 are 8. All 8!
- Fedja: [voice over] Of all of us, she was really the only winner. She had won eternal peace. I almost envied her. How I wanted to be free of everything, of gambling, of this life; but, most of all, of myself.
- Fedja: Cigarette?
- Aristide Pitard: You forget. Your cigarette case is in the pawn shop. Your hand is empty - and so are you, my friend.