A harmless feature of the frolic and fun of the exiled Court at St. Germains were the balls and receptions given by Mary Beatrice. A lively description, too, has been given of the Shrove Tuesday masquerade at St. Germains, to which the whole town was admitted, the barriers being thrown open by her Majesty’s command, in order that all classes, high and low, young and old, English and French, might join in the carnival. Etiquette, however, forbade the Prince and Princess from wearing masks, or assuming any particular characters on these occasions; yet they are represented as dancing merrily in the midst of the motley crowd. On one occasion some indignation was caused when it was discovered that, at a masked ball, the son of the Court apothecary, Bondin, had found admittance, at which the Duchess of Burgundy was present. The apothecary’s son, concealed under his mask, had the audacity to pass for a marquis, and was bold enough to dance with a princess who was not very remote from the throne. At these balls not only James and his Queen, but the young Prince of Wales, were often present. At one of these riotous gatherings the crowd was so great that the little Duke de Berri, son of the Dauphin, nearly lost his life in the pressure by suffocation. Happily he was rescued, but not without some difficulty. It may be noted that the “pretended Prince of Wales,” as the son of James is invariably called by the English papers of the period, is described as being present at these masked balls, “masked,” to save him from being “tied to ceremonials.” And it is recorded that whilst this kind of merriment was going on, the ears of James were deafened by solicitations from his starving disbanded soldiers, whose distress was appalling. Indeed, their condition became so desperate that Louis was petitioned to enrol one hundred of them in the French army; and, when this request was refused, an honest captain of gendarmes, expressing himself too freely, was punished with the loss of his personal freedom, and was flung into the Bastille. It is said that James would have had sympathy with the bold speaker thus cruelly punished, but that his attention was, through the force of circumstances, attracted in different directions.[75] Masquerading was general in Scotland as far back as the days of James I. At the celebration of the marriage of James IV. and the Lady Margaret, a company of English comedians, under the management of John English, enlivened the festivities of the Court with a dramatic representation. “After dinnar a moralite was played by the said Master Englishe and his companions, in the presence of the Kyng and Qwene, and then daunces were daunced.”