A priest once gave me a gift in Aragon. He said it had belonged to a saint. That was a lie. Whatever power dwells in those dice does not answer to heaven. I have no expectation that this account will be believed, nor do I seek redemption by its writing. If absolution were mine to claim, I should have knelt at a confessional long before now. But the hands that hold this pen are soaked too deep in blood — not from war, which is honorable, but from a quieter, meaner kind of murder. The sort done with laughter, wine, and the clatter of dice on a mess-table. My name is Lucien Moreau, born in 1782 in Dijon, in the…

A priest once gave me a gift in Aragon. He said it had belonged to a saint. That was a lie. Whatever power dwells in those dice does not answer to heaven. I have no expectation that this account will be believed, nor do I seek redemption by its writing. If absolution were mine to claim, I should have knelt at a confessional long before now. But the hands that hold this pen are soaked too deep in blood — not from war, which is honorable, but from a quieter, meaner kind of murder. The sort done with laughter, wine, and the clatter of dice on a mess-table. My name is Lucien Moreau, born in 1782 in Dijon, in the…

A priest once gave me a gift in Aragon. He said it had belonged to a saint. That was a lie. Whatever power dwells in those dice does not answer to heaven. I have no expectation that this account will be believed, nor do I seek redemption by its writing. If absolution were mine to claim, I should have knelt at a confessional long before now. But the hands that hold this pen are soaked too deep in blood — not from war, which is honorable, but from a quieter, meaner kind of murder. The sort done with laughter, wine, and the clatter of dice on a mess-table. My name is Lucien Moreau, born in 1782 in Dijon, in the…