ur's reading.--At Versailles, three
theatrical entertainments and two balls a week, two grand suppers
Tuesday and Thursday, and from time to time, the opera in Paris.[2151]
At Fontainebleau, the theater three times a week, and on other days,
play and suppers. During the following winter the queen gives a
masked ball each week, in which "the contrivance of the costumes, the
quadrilles arranged in ballets, and the daily rehearsals, take so much
time as to consume the entire week." During the carnival of 1777 the
queen, besides her own fetes, attends the balls of the Palais-Royal and
the masked balls of the opera; a little later, I find another ball at
the abode of the Comtesse Diana de Polignac, which she attends with
the whole royal family, except Mesdames, and which lasts from half-past
eleven o'clock at night until eleven o'clock the next morning.
Meanwhile, on ordinary days, there is the rage of faro; in her drawing
room "there is no limit to the play; in one evening the Duc de Chartres
loses 8,000 louis. It really resembles an Italian carnival; there is
nothing lacking, neither masks nor the comedy of private life; they
play, they laugh, they dance, they dine, they listen to music, they don
costumes, they get up picnics (fetes-champetres), they indulge in gossip
and gallantries." "The newest song,"[2152] says a cultivated, earnest
lady of the bedchamber, "the current witticism and little scandalous
stories, formed the sole subjects of conversation in the queen's circle
of intimates."--As to the king, who is rather dull and who requires
physical exercise, the chase is his most important occupation.
Between 1755 and 1789,[2153] he himself, on recapitulating what he had
accomplished, finds "104 boar-hunts, 134 stag-hunts, 266 of bucks, 33
with hounds, and 1,025 shootings," in all 1,562 hunting-days, averaging
at least one hunt every three days; besides this there are a 149
excursions without hunts, and 223 promenades on horseback or in
carriages. "During four months of the year he goes to Rambouillet twice
a week and returns after having supped, that is to say, at three o'clock
in the morning."[2154] This inveterate habit ends in becoming a mania,
and even in something worse. "The nonchalance," writes Arthur Young,
June 26, 1789, "and even stupidity of the court, is unparalleled;
the moment demands the greatest decision, and yesterday, while it was
actually a question whether he should be a doge of Venice or a king
of Fr