Queen of Spades — misfortune symbolised?

When Pushkin wrote the Queen of Spades, it was like a Stephen King short story for the 19th century. Just a simple write up that has had at least seven movie adaptations and two or three operas including one by Tchaikovsky.

The basic story is that Hermann, an army officer hears about a countess Fedotovna who in her youth knew the secret of three winning cards that helped her to gain a fortune in Faro. The story is from her grandson as he addresses an audience of fellow card players while Hermann merely watches. It was played by the young countess in France, the fount of culture for early 19th c. Russia.

Herman is obsessed by the story & the countess’s secret. Hermann, courts one of Fedotovna’s maids and uses their growing familiarity if not romance to gain access to the feeble old countess. He begs her to reveal to him three winning cards — but she, in shock and surprise at a stranger’s intrusion barely speaks and says it was just a joke. He then threatens her with a gun without intending to kill her, but this actually causes her to die of fright. Elizaveta the the maid is horrified to find out that he was only after access to Fedotovna — that he wasn’t really in love with her, but in gaining a fortune. She does hear him out and allows him to depart knowing that he was to blame for her employer’s death. While paying respects to the countess’s corpse, Hermann thinks he sees it wink at him. Later on, her ghost visits him and provides him with the names of the three winning cards with various attached conditions on…