arranged in ballets, and the daily rehearsals, take so much time as to consume the entire week.”  During the carnival of 1777 the queen, besides her own fêtes, attends the balls of the Palais-Royal and the masked balls of the opera; a little later, I find another ball at the abode of the Comtesse Diana de Polignac, which she attends with the whole royal family, except Mesdames, and which lasts from half-past eleven o’clock at night until eleven o’clock the next morning.  Meanwhile, on ordinary days, there is the rage of faro; in her drawing room “there is no limit to the play; in one evening the Duc de Chartres loses 8,000 louis.  It really resembles an Italian carnival; there is nothing lacking, neither masks nor the comedy of private life; they play, they laugh, they dance, they dine, they listen to music, they don costumes, they get up picnics (fêtes-champêtres), they indulge in gossip and gallantries.”  “The newest song,"[52] says a cultivated, earnest lady of the bedchamber, “the current witticism and little scandalous stories, formed the sole subjects of conversation in the queen’s circle of intimates.” — As to the king, who is rather dull and who requires physical exercise, the chase is his most important occupation.  Between 1755 and 1789,[53] he himself, on recapitulating what he had accomplished, finds “104 boar-hunts, 134 stag-hunts, 266 of bucks, 33 with hounds, and 1,025 shootings,” in all 1,562 hunting-days, averaging at least one hunt every three days; besides this there are a 149 excursions without hunts, and 223 promenades on horseback or in carriages.  “During four months of the year he goes to Rambouillet twice a week and returns after having supped, that is to say, at three o’clock in the morning."[54] This inveterate habit ends in becoming a mania, and even in something worse.  “The nonchalance,” writes Arthur Young, June 26, 1789, “and even stupidity of the court, is unparalleled; the moment demands the greatest decision, and yesterday, while it was actually a question whether he should be a doge of Venice or a king of France, the king went a hunting!” His journal reads like that of a gamekeeper’s.  On reading it at the most important dates one is amazed at its entries.  He writes nothing on the days not devoted to hunting, which means that to him these days are of no account: 

July 11, 1789, nothing; M. Necker leaves.

July 12th vespers and benediction; Messieurs de Montmorin, de
Saint-Priest and de la Luzerne leave.

July 13th , nothing.

July 14th , nothing.

July 29th, nothing; M. Necker returns.....

August 4th, stag-hunt in the forest at Marly; took one; go and come on horseback.

August 13th, audience of the States in the gallery; Te Deum during the mass below; one stag taken in the hunt at Marly. . .

August 25th, complimentary audience of the States; high mass with the cordons bleus; M. Bailly sworn in; vespers and benediction; state dinner....