“Before the Revolution there were customs and words in use at Versailles with which few people were acquainted.  The King’s dinner was called ’The King’s meat.’  Two of the Body Guard accompanied the attendants who carried the dinner; every one rose as they passed through the halls, saying, ‘There is the King’s meat.’  All precautionary duties were distinguished by the words ‘in case.’  One of the guards might be heard to say, ‘I am in case in the forest of St. Germain.’  In the evening they always brought the Queen a large bowl of broth, a cold roast fowl, one bottle of wine, one of orgeat, one of lemonade, and some other articles, which were called the ‘in case’ for the night.  An old medical gentleman, who had been physician in ordinary to Louis XIV., and was still living at the time of the marriage of Louis XV., told M. Campan’s father an anecdote which seems too remarkable to have remained unknown; nevertheless he was a man of honour, incapable of inventing this story.  His name was Lafosse.  He said that Louis XIV. was informed that the officers of his table evinced, in the most disdainful and offensive manner, the mortification they felt at being obliged to eat at the table of the comptroller of the kitchen along with Moliere, valet de chambre to his Majesty, because Moliere had performed on the stage; and that this celebrated author consequently declined appearing at that table.  Louis XIV., determined to put an end to insults which ought never to have been offered to one of the greatest geniuses of the age, said to him one morning at the hour of his private levee, ’They say you live very poorly here, Moliere; and that the officers of my chamber do not find you good enough to eat with them.  Perhaps you are hungry; for my part I awoke with a very good appetite this morning:  sit down at this table.  Serve up my ‘in case’ for the night there.’  The King, then cutting up his fowl, and ordering Moliere to sit down, helped him to a wing, at the same time taking one for himself, and ordered the persons entitled to familiar entrance, that is to say the most distinguished and favourite people at Court, to be admitted.  ’You see me,’ said the King to them, ’engaged in entertaining Moliere, whom my valets de chambre do not consider sufficiently good company for them.’  From that time Moliere never had occasion to appear at the valets’ table; the whole Court was forward enough to send him invitations.

“M. de Lafosse used also to relate that a brigade-major of the Body Guard, being ordered to place the company in the little theatre at Versailles, very roughly turned out one of the King’s comptrollers who had taken his seat on one of the benches, a place to which his newly acquired office entitled him.  In vain he insisted on his quality and his right.  The altercation was ended by the brigade-major in these words:  ’Gentlemen Body Guards, do your duty.’  In this case their duty was to turn the offender out at the door.  This comptroller,