The Opera Ball dates, like the Opera itself, from the reign of Louis XIV. But the license for musico-dramatic performances had been issued forty years before it occurred to the Chevalier de Bouillon to apply to the King for permission to give masked balls. The King hastened to grant the Chevalier's request; and was indeed so pleased with it that he assigned to him a pension of 6,000 livres (francs) for the idea, which had simply been borrowed. What is still more remarkable is the fact that an Augustine monk, Nicholas Bourgeois, invented the mechanism by which, in half an hour, the floor of the auditorium could be raised to the level of the stage boards. Although the privilege or patent was given to the Chevalier de Bouillon at the beginning of January, 1713, it was not until January, 1716, that the first opera ball took place. From that year until 1830 no masked or fancy dress ball could be given at any other theatre. On the accession, however, of Louis Philippe, the Opera lost its dancing monopoly, and there are now numbers of Paris theatres at which, during the Carnival, masked balls occur. The receipts at an Opera Ball are said to average 50,000 francs (£2,000). Close to the Opera lie all the fashionable clubs of Paris, beginning with the Jockey Club at the corner of the Boulevard de La Madeleine. The English Jockey Club is known to be an association of horse-owners and others interested in racing, who frame regulations and decide cases in connection with the Turf. The Jockey Club of Paris, while founded on much the same basis as the English institution of the same name, is also a club in the ordinary sense of the word, and an exceedingly good one. The Jockey Club, which boasts of numbering on its books members of all the reigning families of Europe, is, by its formal title, a "Society of Encouragement for the Amelioration of Breeds of Horses in France." It was originated in 1833, under the auspices of the Duke of Orleans, eldest son of Louis Philippe, in order to popularise racing, regulate it, and obtain for it subsidies from the State and the Municipalities. A committee of thirteen members is exclusively entrusted with the organisation and superintendence of races. The code of the Jockey Club is adopted as a basis of regulations by nearly all the other racing societies of France. The Jockey Club itself directs the racing of only three courses, those of the Bois de Boulogne, Fontainebleau, and Chantilly. This club, first established at the corner of the Rue du Helder, and then transferred to the Hôtel de Lange on the Boulevard Montmartre, moved in 1857 to the corner of the Rue de Grammont, where the Cercle des Deux Mondes now has its headquarters, and finally, in 1860, to its present abode, for which it pays an annual rental of 100,000 francs. Not one of the Paris clubs seems, like the principal London clubs, to possess its own house. As a rule the annual subscription to the Paris club is high, amounting in some cases to 500 francs.