The Italians whom Mazarin brought into France obtained from the king permission to set up _Hoca_ tables in Paris. The parliament launched two edicts against them, and threatened to punish them severely. The king's edicts were equally severe. Every of offender was to be fined 1000 livres, and the person in whose house Faro, Basset, or any such game was suffered, incurred the penalty of 6000 livres for each offence. The persons who played were to be imprisoned. Gaming was forbidden the French cavalry under the penalty of death, and every commanding officer who should presume to set up a Hazard table was to be cashiered, and all concerned to be rigorously imprisoned. These penalties might show great horror of gaming, but they were too severe to be steadily inflicted, and therefore failed to repress the crime against which they were directed. The severer the law the less the likelihood of its application, and consequently its power of repression. Madame de Sevigne had beheld the gamesters only in the presence of their master the king, or in the circles which were regulated with inviolable propriety; but what would she have said if she could have seen the gamblers at the secret suppers and in the country-houses of the Superintendent Fouquet, where twenty 'qualified' players, such as the Marshals de Richelieu, de Clairembaut, &c., assembled together, with a dash of bad company, to play for lands, houses, jewels, even for point-lace and neckties? There she would have seen something more than gold staked, since the players debased themselves so low as to circumvent certain opulent dupes, who were the first invited. To leave one hundred pistoles, ostensibly for 'the cards,' but really as the perquisite of the master of the lordly house; to recoup him when he lost; and, when they had to deal with some unimportant but wealthy individual, to undo him completely, compelling him to sign his ruin on the gaming table--such was the conduct which rendered a man _recherche_, and secured the title of a fine player! It was precisely thus that the famous (or infamous) Gourville, successively valet-de-chambre to the Duc de la Rochefoucault, hanged in effigy at Paris, king's envoy in Germany, and afterwards proposed to replace Colbert--it was thus precisely, I say, that Gourville secured favour, 'consideration,' fortune; for he declares, in his Memoirs, that his gains in a few years amounted to more than a million. And fortune seems to have cherished and blessed him throughout his detestable career. After having made his fortune, he retired to write the scandalous Memoirs from which I have been quoting, and died out of debt!(56) (56) Mem. de Gourville, i. France became too narrow a theatre for the chevaliers d'industrie and all who were a prey to the fury of gambling. The Count de Grammont, a very suspicious player, turned his talents to account in England, Italy, and Spain.