Sometimes the losses of the players at the tables were enormous; again, nobles counted their gains by the hundred thousands.  The youthful granddaughter of the King, the Duchess of Bourgogne, lost at one time a sum equaling 600,000 francs, which her doting grandfather paid, as he also paid debts of the Duke of Bourgogne.  During one night’s play the King himself lost a sum totaling “many millions.”  On occasion the courtiers were entertained at festivities arranged for the heir to the throne, or by the cardinal that was in residence at the chateau.  During masked balls held in the carnival season dancers sometimes changed their costumes two or three times in an evening—­one worn under another being revealed by pulling a silken cord.  Often well-tempered confusion was caused by gay subterfuges—­an exchange of masks, or the imposing of one mask on another.  The costumes were sumptuous beyond words.  “It is impossible to witness at one time more jewelry,” naively recited the Mercure in setting forth the richness of a cercle at which the Court was present in 1707.

Let us read further from the Mercure of the diversions that drove dull care away at a Court carnival:  “There have been this winter five balls in five different apartments at Versailles, all so grand and so beautiful that no other royal house in the world can show the like.  Entrance was given to masks only, and no persons presented themselves without being disguised, unless they were of very high rank. . . .  People invent grotesque disguises, they revive old fashions, they choose the most ridiculous things, and seek to make them as amusing as possible. . . .  Mgr. le Dauphin changed his disguise eight or ten times each evening.  M. Berain had need of all his wit to furnish these disguises, and of all his ingenuity to get them made up, since there was so little time between one ball and another.  The prince did not wish to be recognized, and all sorts of extraordinary disguises were invented for him; frequently under the figures that concealed him, one could not have told whether the person thus masked was tall or short, fat or thin.  Sometimes he had double masks, and under the first a mask of wax so well made that, when he took off his first mask, people fancied they saw the natural face, and he deceived everybody.  Nothing can equal the enjoyment which Mgr. le Dauphin takes in all these diversions, nor the rapidity with which he changes his disguises.  He leaves all his officers without being fatigued, although he works harder at dressing and undressing himself than they do, and he danced much.  This prince shows in the least things, in his horsemanship, and in the ardor with which he follows the chase, what pleasure he will take some day in commanding armies.  But could one expect less from the son of Louis the Great!