p to 1789, the great
families never stir away from Versailles, and day and night they lie in
ambush. The valet of the Marshal de Noaillles says to him one night on
closing his curtains,

"At what hour will Monseigneur be awakened?" "At ten o'clock, if no one
dies during the night."[2133]

Old courtiers are still found who, "at the age of eighty, have passed
forty-five on their feet in the antechambers of the king, of the
princes, and of the ministers. . .

"You have only three things to do," says one of them to a debutant,
"speak well of everybody, ask for every vacancy, and sit down when you
can."

Hence, the king always has a crowd around him. The Comtesse du Barry
says, on presenting her niece at court, the first of August, 1773, "the
crowd is so great at a presentation, one can scarcely get through the
antechambers."[2134] In December, 1774, at Fontainebleau, when the queen
plays at her own table every evening, "the apartment, though vast, is
never empty. . . . The crowd is so great that one can talk only to the
two or three persons with whom one is playing." The fourteen apartments,
at the receptions of ambassadors are full to overflowing with seigniors
and richly dressed women. On the first of January, 1775, the queen
"counted over two hundred ladies presented to her to pay their court."
In 1780, at Choisy, a table for thirty persons is spread every day for
the king, another with thirty places for the seigniors, another with
forty places for the officers of the guard and the equerries, and one
with fifty for the officers of the bedchamber. According to my estimate,
the king, on getting up and on retiring, on his walks, on his hunts,
at play, has always around him at least forty or fifty seigniors and
generally a hundred, with as many ladies, besides his attendants on
duty. At Fontainebleau, in 1756, although "there were neither fetes nor
ballets this year, one hundred and six ladies were counted." When the
king holds a "grand apartement," when play or dancing takes place in the
gallery of mirrors, four or five hundred guests, the elect of the nobles
and of the fashion, range themselves on the benches or gather around the
card and cavanole tables.[2135] This is a spectacle to be seen, not by
the imagination, or through imperfect records, but with our own eyes
and on the spot, to comprehend the spirit, the effect and the triumph of
monarchical culture. In an elegantly furnished house, the drawing
room is the pr