trafficked in cards and dice when they should have been employed in commerce or in science; the very valets gambled in the halls, and the pages in the ante-chambers.  Play became the one great business of life throughout the capital; and enormous sums, which changed the entire destiny of families, were won and lost.  One or two traits will suffice to prove this, and we will then dismiss the subject.  In the year 1607, M. de Bassompierre relates in his Memoirs, that being unable from want of funds to purchase a new and befitting costume in which to appear at the christening of the Dauphin, he nevertheless gave an order to his tailor to prepare him a dress upon which the outlay was to be fourteen thousand crowns; his actual resources amounting at that moment only to seven hundred; and that he had no sooner done so, than he proceeded with this trifling sum to the hotel of the Duc d’Epernon, where he won five thousand; while before the completion of the costume, he had not only gained a sufficient amount to discharge the debt thus wantonly incurred, but, as he adds, with a self-gratulation worthy of a better cause, “also a diamond-hilted sword of the value of five thousand crowns, and five or six thousand more with which to amuse myself.” [135]

In 1609, only one Year later, L’Etoile has left on record a still more astounding and degrading fact.  “In this month” (March), he says, “several academies of play have been established, where citizens of all ages risk considerable sums, a circumstance which proves not only an abundance of means, but also the corruption of morals.  The son of a merchant has been seen at one sitting to lose sixty thousand crowns, although he had only inherited twenty thousand from his father; and a man named Jonas has hired a house in the Faubourg St. Germain, in order to hold one of these academies for a fortnight during the fair, and for this house he has given fourteen hundred francs.” [136]

D’Aubigny and several other chroniclers bear similar testimony; and while Bassompierre boasts of having won five hundred thousand pistoles in one year (each pistole being little inferior in value to our own sovereign), he nevertheless gives us plainly to understand that the King was a more reckless gamester than himself, a fact corroborated moreover by Sully, who tells us in his Memoirs, “The sums, at least the principal ones, that I employed on the personal expenses of Henry, were twenty-two thousand pistoles, for which he sent to me on the 18th of January 1609, and which he had lost at play; a hundred thousand livres to one party, and fifty-one thousand to another, likewise play debts, due to Edward Fernandes, a Portuguese....  A thousand pistoles for future play; Henry at first took only five hundred, but he subsequently sent Beringhen for the remainder for a different purpose.  I carried him a thousand more for play when I went with the Chancellor to Fontainebleau.” [137]