cardsharper

Such debts amounted to about four thousand: one thousand five hundred for a horse, and two thousand five hundred as surety for a young comrade, Venovsky, who had lost that sum to a cardsharper in Vronsky's presence.

Kogan drew some haunting colours from his players, not least an evocative colloquy between flute and horn, and snare-drum flourishes like the shuffling of a cardsharper. I have been left jaded so often by routine performances of this work so crucial to the salvation of its composer's career.

But the cardsharper and the clothes-stealer belong to the illiberal class, because they are sordidly avaricious: it is for gain that both types follow their profession and submit to a bad reputation, the one accepting the severest risks for the sake of their pilferings, the other profiting at the expense of their friends, to whom they ought to give; so both are sordidly avaricious, because they want to make gain from a wrong source.