'At ten o'clock they get into their carriages: THE KING, MADAME DE MONTESPAN, the Duke of Orleans, and Madame de Thianges, and the good Hendicourt on the dickey, that is as if one were in the upper gallery. You know how these calashes are made.
'The queen was in another with the princesses; and then everybody else, grouped as they liked. Then they go on the water in gondolas, with music; they return at ten; the play is ready, it is over; twelve strikes, supper is brought in, and so passes Saturday.'
This lively picture of such frightful gambling, of the adulterous triumph of Madame de Montespan, and of the humiliating part to which the queen was condemned, will induce our readers to concur with Madame de Sevigne, who, amused as she had been by the scene she has described, calls it nevertheless, with her usual pure taste and good judgment, l'iniqua corte, 'the iniquitous court.'
Indeed, Madame de Sevigne had ample reason to denounce this source of her domestic misery. Writing to her son and daughter, she says:—'You lose all you play for. You have paid five or six thousand francs for your amusement, and to be abused by fortune.'
If she had at first been fascinated by the spectacle which she so glowingly describes, the interest of her children soon opened her eyes to the yawning gulf at the brink of the flowery surface.
Sometimes she explains herself plainly:—'You believe that everybody plays as honestly as yourself? Call to mind what took place lately at the Hotel de la Vieuville. Do you remember that ROBBERY?'
The favour of that court, so much coveted, seemed to her to be purchased at too high a price if it was to be gained by ruinous complaisances. She trembled every time her son left her to go to Versailles. She says:—'He tells me he is going to play with his young master;(54) I shudder at the thought. Four hundred pistoles are very easily lost: ce n'est rien pour Admete et c'est beaucoup pour lui.(55) If Dangeau is in the game he will win all the pools: he is an eagle. Then will come to pass, my daughter, all that God may vouchsafe—il en arivera, ma fille, tout ce qu'il plaira a Dieu.'
(54) The Dauphin.
(55) 'It is nothing for Admetus, but 'tis much for him.'
And again, 'The game of Hoca is prohibited at Paris UNDER THE PENALTY OF DEATH, and yet it is played at court. Five thousand pistoles before dinner is nothing. That game is a regular cut-throat.'
Hoca was prodigiously unfavourable to the players; the latter had only twenty-eight chances against thirty. In the seventeenth century this game caused such disorder at Rome that the Pope prohibited it and expelled the bankers.
The Italians whom Mazarin brought into France obtained from the king permission to set up Hoca tables in Paris. The parliament launched two edicts against them, and threatened to punish them severely. The king's edicts were equally severe. Every of offender was to be fined 1000 livres, and the person in whose house Faro, Basset, or any such game was suffered, incurred the penalty of 6000 livres for each offence. The persons who played were to be imprisoned. Gaming was forbidden the French cavalry under the penalty of death, and every commanding officer who should presume to set up a Hazard table was to be cashiered, and all concerned to be rigorously imprisoned. These penalties might show great horror of gaming, but they were too severe to be steadily inflicted, and therefore failed to repress the crime against which they were directed. The severer the law the less the likelihood of its application, and consequently its power of repression.
Madame de Sevigne had beheld the gamesters only in the presence of their master the king, or in the circles which were regulated with inviolable propriety; but what would she have said if she could have seen the gamblers at the secret suppers and in the country-houses of the Superintendent Fouquet, where twenty 'qualified' players, such as the Marshals de Richelieu, de Clairembaut, &c., assembled together, with a dash of bad company, to play for lands, houses, jewels, even for point-lace and neckties? There she would have seen something more than gold staked, since the players debased themselves so low as to circumvent certain opulent dupes, who were the first invited. To leave one hundred pistoles, ostensibly for 'the cards,' but really as the perquisite of the master of the lordly house; to recoup him when he lost; and, when they had to deal with some unimportant but wealthy individual, to undo him completely, compelling him to sign his ruin on the gaming table—such was the conduct which rendered a man recherche, and secured the title of a fine player!
It was precisely thus that the famous (or infamous) Gourville, successively valet-de-chambre to the Duc de la Rochefoucault, hanged in effigy at Paris, king's envoy in Germany, and afterwards proposed to replace Colbert—it was thus precisely, I say, that Gourville secured favour, 'consideration,' fortune; for he declares, in his Memoirs, that his gains in a few years amounted to more than a million. And fortune seems to have cherished and blessed him throughout his detestable career. After having made his fortune, he retired to write the scandalous Memoirs from which I have been quoting, and died out of debt!(56)
(56) Mem. de Gourville, i.
France became too narrow a theatre for the chevaliers d'industrie and all who were a prey to the fury of gambling. The Count de Grammont, a very suspicious player, turned his talents to account in England, Italy, and Spain.
This same Count de Grammont figured well at court on one occasion when Louis XIV. seemed inclined to cheat or otherwise play unfairly. Playing at backgammon, and having a doubtful throw, a dispute arose, and the surrounding courtiers remained silent. The Count de Grammont happening to come in, the king desired him to decide it. He instantly answered—'Sire, your Majesty is in the wrong.' 'How,' said the king, 'can you decide before you know the question?' 'Because,' replied the count, 'had there been any doubt, all these gentlemen would have given it in favour of your Majesty.' The plain inference is that this (at the time) great world's idol and Voltaire's god, was 'up to a little cheating.' It was, however, as much to the king's credit that he submitted to the decision, as it was to that of the courtier who gave him such a lesson.
The magnanimity of Louis XIV. was still more strikingly shown on another gambling occasion. Very high play was going on at the cardinal's, and the Chevalier de Rohan lost a vast sum to the king. The agreement was to pay only in louis d'ors; and the chevalier, after counting out seven or eight hundred, proposed to continue the payment in Spanish pistoles. 'You promised me louis d'ors, and not pistoles,' said the king. 'Since your Majesty refuses them,' replied the chevalier, 'I don't want them either;' and thereupon he flung them out of the window. The king got angry, and complained to Mazarin, who replied:—'The Chevalier de Rohan has played the king, and you the Chevalier de Rohan.' The king acquiesced.(57)
(57) Mem. et Reflex., &e., par M. L. M. L. F. (the Marquis de la Fare).
As before stated, the court of the Roman Emperor Augustus, in spite of the many laws enacted against gambling, diffused the frenzy through Rome; in like manner the court of Louis XIV., almost in the same circumstances, infected Paris and the entire kingdom with the vice.
There is this difference between the French monarch and the Roman emperor, that the latter did not teach his successors to play against the people, whereas Louis, after having denounced gaming, and become almost disgusted with it, finished with established lotteries. High play was always the etiquette at court, but the sittings became less frequent and were abridged. 'The king,' says Madame de Sevigne, 'has not given over playing, but the sittings are not so long.'
LOUIS XV.—At the death of Louis XIV. three-fourths of the nation thought of nothing but gambling. Gambling, indeed, became itself an object of speculation, in consequence of the establishment and development of lotteries—the