, chaplains, confessors, masters of the
oratory, clerks, announcers, carpet-bearers, choristers, copyists,
and composers of sacred music; his faculty is composed of forty-eight
physicians, surgeons, apothecaries, oculists, operators, bone-setters,
distillers, chiropodists and spagyrists (a species of alchemists).
We must still note his department of profane music, consisting of one
hundred and twenty-eight vocalists, dancers, instrumentalists, directors
and superintendents; his library corps of forty-three keepers, readers,
interpreters, engravers, medallists, geographers, binders and printers;
the staff of ceremonial display, sixty-two heralds, sword-bearers,
ushers and musicians; the staff of housekeepers, consisting of
sixty-eight marshals, guides and commissaries. I omit other services in
haste to reach the most important,--that of the table; a fine house and
good housekeeping being known by the table.

There are three sections of the table service;[2119] the first for the
king and his younger children; the second, called the little ordinary,
for the table of the grand-master, the grand-chamberlain and the
princes and princesses living with the king; the third, called the great
ordinary, for the grand-master's second table, that of the butlers of
the king's household, the almoners, the gentlemen in waiting, and that
of the valets-de-chambre, in all three hundred and eighty-three officers
of the table and one hundred and three waiters, at an expense of
2,177,771 livres; besides this there are 389,173 livres appropriated
to the table of Madame Elisabeth, and 1,093,547 livres for that
of Mesdames, the total being 3,660,491 livres for the table. The
wine-merchant furnished wine to the amount of 300,000 francs per annum,
and the purveyor game, meat and fish at a cost of 1,000,000 livres. Only
to fetch water from Ville-d'Avray, and to convey servants, waiters and
provisions, required fifty horses hired at the rate of 70,591 francs per
annum. The privilege of the royal princes and princesses "to send to the
bureau for fish on fast days when not residing regularly at the court,"
amounts in 1778 to 175,116 livres. On reading in the Almanach the titles
of these officials we see a Gargantua's feast spread out before us.
The formal hierarchy of the kitchens, so many grand officials of the
table,--the butlers, comptrollers and comptroller-pupils, the clerks and
gentlemen of the pantry, the cup-bearers and carvers, the officers an