Brongniart, Robert, compose charades every night and wake each other up to repeat them." At Maupertuis in M. de Montesquiou's house, at Saint-Ouen with the Marshal de Noailles, at Genevilliers with the Comte de Vandreuil, at Rainay with the Duc d'Orléans, at Chantilly with the Prince de Condé, there is nothing but festivity. We read no biography of the day, no provincial document, no inventory, without hearing the tinkling of the universal carnival. At Monchoix,[2258] the residence of the Comte de Bédé, Châteaubriand's uncle, "they had music, dancing and hunting, rollicking from morning to night, eating up both capital and income." At Aix and Marseilles, throughout the fashionable world, with the Comte de Valbelle, I find nothing but concerts, entertainment, balls, gallantries, and private theatricals with the Comtesse de Mirabeau for the leading performer. At Chateauroux, M. Dupin de Francueil entertains "a troop of musicians, lackeys, cooks, parasites, horses and dogs, bestowing everything lavishly, in amusements and in charity, wishing to be happy himself and everybody else around him," never casting up accounts, and going to ruin in the most delightful manner possible. Nothing arrests this gaiety, neither old age, exile, nor misfortune; in 1793 it still subsists in the prisons of the Republic. A man in place is not then made uncomfortable by his official coat, puffed up by his situation, obliged to maintain a dignified and important air, constrained under that assumed gravity which democratic envy imposes on us as if a ransom. In 1753,[2259] the parliamentarians, just exiled to Bourges, get up three companies of private theatricals and perform comedies, while one of them, M. Dupré de Saint-Maur, fights a rival with the sword. In 1787,[2260] when the entire parliament is banished to Troyes the bishop, M. de Barral, returns from his chateau de Saint-Lye expressly to receive it, presiding every evening at a dinner of forty persons. "There was no end to the fêtes and dinners in the town; the president kept open house," a triple quantity of food being consumed in the eating-houses and so much wood burned in the kitchens, that the town came near being put on short allowance. Feasting and jollity is but little less in ordinary times. A parliamentarian, like a seignior, must do credit to his fortune. See the letters of the President des Brosses concerning society in Dijon; it reminds us of the abbey of Thélème; then contrast this with the same town today.[2261] In 1744, Monseigneur de Montigny, brother of the President de Bourbonne, apropos of the king's recovery, entertains the workmen, tradesmen and artisans in his employ to the number of eighty, another table being for his musicians and comedians, and a third for his clerks, secretaries, physicians, surgeons, attorneys and notaries; the crowd collects around a triumphal car covered with shepherdesses, shepherds and rustic divinities in theatrical costume; fountains flow with wine "as if it