The Fourth Estate

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In May 1789, Louis XVI summoned to Versailles a full meeting of the ‘Estates General.’

The First Estate consisted of three hundred nobles.

The Second Estate, three hundred clergy.

The Third Estate, six hundred commoners.

Some years later, after the French Revolution, Edmund Burke, looking up at the Press Gallery of the House of Commons said, ‘Yonder sits the Fourth Estate, and they are more important than them all.’

The odds were stacked against him. But the odds had never worried Richard Armstrong in the past.

‘Faites vos jeux, mesdames et messieurs. Place your bets.’

Armstrong stared down at the green baize. The mountain of red chips that had been placed in front of him twenty minutes earlier had dwindled to a single stack. He had already lost forty thousand francs that evening — but what was forty thousand francs when you had squandered a billion dollars in the past twelve months?

He leaned over and deposited all his remaining chips on zero.

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