The tables were at first covered with green cloths which hung down and were held in place by their bullion fringes; but these covers were soon discarded, and the cloth was carefully pasted on the top of the table. Much ingenuity was expended in making the card-tables as handsome as were all the other details of the room. They were inlaid with beautiful woods, painted by celebrated artists, and richly ornamented in many other ways. They are nearly always square or partly rounded in shape, but are sometimes octagonal or three-cornered. Mazarin seized on cards, which he was passionately fond of, as a means of instructing the young King Louis, and adopted the educational series, inducing the eight-year-old monarch to study history, geography, and other sciences by their means. This early introduction to cards led to their becoming the ruling passion of the life of that “Grand Monarch;” and under his reign the rage for cards reached a great height, and enormous sums were lost and gained. Mazarin was himself a notorious gambler; and his niece, although left an enormous fortune by her Cardinal uncle, died insolvent, the greater part of her money having been lost at cards. When Louis Quatorze reached the age of manhood, every evening from six until ten o’clock was passed in play. Even when engaged in necessary business, the game proceeded, the King deputing some of his courtiers to hold his cards during his absence. The knights of the green cloth being in such favour, a card-ball was proposed and given at Marley, Feb. 19, 1700, at which one dance was performed by the courtiers, who were dressed like the court cards of the pack. As Marley was the palace above all others in which gambling was carried to the highest extent, it was, says the historian, “the appropriate theatre for such an event.” The rage for playing cards was at one time as great in England as in France. James the First forbade cards in Scotland; but it was his favourite amusement. Charles the First did not disdain to create a monopoly of playing-cards by buying all those produced by the Card-makers’ Company of London, and selling them out at a much higher price. Cards sold in 1545 for twopence a pack, and they must have been wretched specimens. The marriage of Charles to a French princess in 1629 may have introduced Piquet into England; it is mentioned in a book printed in 1649, at the same time with Cribbage.