we find in the accounts of his treasurer, Charles Poupart, an entry to the following effect:--“Given to Jacquemin Gringonneur, painter, for three packs of cards, gilt and diversly coloured, and ornamented with several devices, to deliver to the lord the king for his amusement, fifty-six sols of Paris.” It is clear from this entry that the game of cards was then tolerably well known in France, and that it was by no means new, though it was evidently not a common game, and the cards had to be made by a painter--that is, as I suppose, an illuminator of manuscripts. We find as yet no allusion to them in England: and it is remarkable that neither Chaucer, nor any of the numerous writers of his and the following age, ever speak of them. An illuminated manuscript of apparently the earlier part of the fifteenth century, perhaps of Flemish workmanship (it contains a copy of Raoul de Presle’s French translation of St. Augustine’s “Civitas Dei”), presents us with another card-party, which we give in our cut No. 157. Three persons are here engaged in the game, two of whom are ladies. After the date at which three packs of cards were made for the amusement of the lunatic king, the game of cards seems soon to have become common in France; for less than four years later--on the 22nd of January, 1397--the provost of Paris considered it necessary to publish an edict, forbidding working people to play at tennis, bowls, dice, _cards_, or ninepins, on working days. By one of the acts of the synod of Langres, in 1404, the clergy were expressly forbidden to play at cards. These had now made their way into Germany, and had become so popular there, that early in the fifteenth century card-making had become a regular trade. [Illustration: _No. 157. Cards in the Fifteenth Century._]