'At ten o'clock they get into their carriages: _THE KING, MADAME DE MONTESPAN_, the Duke of Orleans, and Madame de Thianges, and the good Hendicourt on the dickey, that is as if one were in the upper gallery. You know how these calashes are made. 'The queen was in another with the princesses; and then everybody else, grouped as they liked. Then they go on the water in gondolas, with music; they return at ten; the play is ready, it is over; twelve strikes, supper is brought in, and so passes Saturday.' This lively picture of such frightful gambling, of the adulterous triumph of Madame de Montespan, and of the humiliating part to which the queen was condemned, will induce our readers to concur with Madame de Sevigne, who, amused as she had been by the scene she has described, calls it nevertheless, with her usual pure taste and good judgment, _l'iniqua corte_, 'the iniquitous court.' Indeed, Madame de Sevigne had ample reason to denounce this source of her domestic misery. Writing to her son and daughter, she says:--'You lose all you play for. You have paid five or six thousand francs for your amusement, and to be abused by fortune.' If she had at first been fascinated by the spectacle which she so glowingly describes, the interest of her children soon opened her eyes to the yawning gulf at the brink of the flowery surface. Sometimes she explains herself plainly:--'You believe that everybody plays as honestly as yourself? Call to mind what took place lately at the Hotel de la Vieuville. Do you remember that _ROBBERY?_' The favour of that court, so much coveted, seemed to her to be purchased at too high a price if it was to be gained by ruinous complaisances. She trembled every time her son left her to go to Versailles. She says:--'He tells me he is going to play with his young master;(54) I shudder at the thought. Four hundred pistoles are very easily lost: _ce n'est rien pour Admete et c'est beaucoup pour lui_.(55) If Dangeau is in the game he will win all the pools: he is an eagle. Then will come to pass, my daughter, all that God may vouchsafe--_il en arivera, ma fille, tout ce qu'il plaira a Dieu_.' (54) The Dauphin. (55) 'It is nothing for Admetus, but 'tis much for him.' And again, 'The game of _Hoca_ is prohibited at Paris _UNDER THE PENALTY OF DEATH_, and yet it is played at court. Five thousand pistoles before dinner is nothing. That game is a regular cut-throat.' Hoca was prodigiously unfavourable to the players; the latter had only twenty-eight chances against thirty. In the seventeenth century this game caused such disorder at Rome that the Pope prohibited it and expelled the bankers.