She was an avid gambler, and because of her failing eyesight, a deck of large-format cards was kept for her at the court.36 Once, her grandson, S. G. Golitsyn, had lost a large sum at cards and came to his grandmother to beg for money. Instead of money, the princess told him of the three winning cards that Saint-Germain had once revealed to her in Paris. The grandson bet on them and regained his loss.37 Vinogradov offered a more plausible explanation of the uncanny denouement; he cast the mysterious intrusion of the queen of spades at the end of the tale as the materialization of Ger- mann's repressed guilt for the death of the old lady.42 This psychological interpretation becomes even more. Thus, throughout the story, the "queen" clearly dominates over the vulnerable "ace." them. When he selected "his card" (Pushkin does not say ace, but "svoiu kartu"), the alleged ace must have been before Ger- mann's very eyes.
way to recovery or victory. PLACEMENT OF THE O R D E A L T h e placement of the crisis or Ordeal depends on the needs of the story and the tastes of the storyteller. T h e most common pattern is for the death-and-rebirth moment to come near the middle of the story, as shown in the Central Crisis diagram. C E N T R A L CRISIS ACT I I A C T II a I ACT H b I ACT m Denouement Midpoint Ordeal^ Dramatic high points in a story with a Central Crisis (vertical lines represent the high point of each act) A central crisis has the advantage o f symmetry, and leaves plenty of time for elaborate consequences to flow from the ordeal. N o t e that this structure allows for another critical moment or turning point at the end of Act Two. 157
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