No original specimen has been preserved of the _tarots_ (_tarrochi_, _tarrochini_) or Italian cards of this epoch; but we possess a pack engraved about 1460, which is known to be an exact copy of them. Added to this, Raphael Maffei, who lived at the end of the fifteenth century, has left in his “Commentaries” a description of _tarots_, which were, he says, “a new invention,”--in comparison, doubtless, with the origin of playing-cards. From these two documents--though they present some differences--we may gather that the pack of _tarots_ was then composed of four or five series or suits, each of ten cards, bearing consecutive numbers, and presenting so many _deniers_, _bâtons_, _coupes_, and _épées_, equal in number to that of the card. To these series we must add a whole assortment of figures, representing the _King_, the _Queen_, the _Knight_, the _Foot-traveller_, the _World_, _Justice_, an _Angel_, the _Sun_, the _Devil_, a _Castle_, _Death_, a _Gibbet_, the _Pope_, _Love_, a _Buffoon_ (Fig. 206), &c. It is evident that _tarots_ were current in France long before the invention of the game of piquet, which is unquestionably of French origin; and among these _tarots_ we must class the cards that are called those of Charles VI. (Figs. 207 and 208), and are now preserved in the Print-Room of the Bibliothèque Impériale in Paris; these may be considered as the oldest to be found in any collection, either public or private. The Abbé de Longuerue states that he saw the pack with all its cards complete; but only seventeen have been preserved to our day. These cards are painted with delicacy, like the miniatures in manuscripts, on a gilt ground, filled with dots forming a perforated ornamentation; they are also surrounded by a silvered border in which a similar dotting depicts a spirally twisted ribbon. This dotting is doubtless the _tare_, a kind of goffering produced by small holes pricked out and arranged in compartments, to which the _tarots_ owe their names, and of which our present cards still retain a kind of reminiscence, in their backs being covered with arabesques or dotted over in black or various colours. These cards were about seven inches long and three and a half inches wide, and were painted in distemper on cardboard ·039 inch thick. The composition of them is ingenious and to some extent skilful, the drawing correct and full of character, and the colouring or illumination brilliant. [Illustration: Fig. 206.--The Buffoon, a Card from a Pack of _Tarots_. Fifteenth Century.]