concept
Piquet
piquet
also: пикет
A card game for two players, fashionable in genteel Russian households of the period; the princess teaches it to Chaikhidzev and plays it on Sundays with an old general, using it as a marker of decorum and seriousness.
Reading notes
- Obscure People §19 piquet
A card game for two players, fashionable in genteel 19th-century households; Lyashkevsky and Finks play several games of it across the story's afternoon and evening, its running score providing a comic rhythmic counterpoint to Lyashkevsky's tirades against the idle townsfolk he watches through the window.
- The Crow §18 played piquet
A genteel two-player card game; here its presence in Madame Dudu's back room is a small comic incongruity against the house's actual business.
- The Green Braid §13 play piquet
A two-player card game fashionable in genteel Russian drawing rooms, used throughout the story as a marker of decorous, old-style sociability.
- The Green Braid §24 teach him to play piquet
The princess's approving lesson in piquet marks her growing favor toward Chaikhidzev as a suitably serious, decorous match for Olya.