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 first having been designed to celebrat