Then the queen with her court played at blindman’s bluff, at pampam, or at a game invented by the Duke de Chartres, the future Duke Philippe d’Orleans, Egalite, and which game was called “descamper,” a sort of hide-and-seek amusement, in which the ladies hid themselves in the shady bushes and groves, to be there discovered by the gentlemen, and then to endeavor by flight to save themselves, for if once caught and seized they had to purchase their liberty with a kiss.

When evening came all left the cottages for the little castle, and the pastoral recreations gave way to the higher enjoyments of refined society.  Marie Antoinette was not in the castle of Trianon queen again, but she was not either the simple lady of the farm, she was the lady of the castle, and—­the first amateur in the theatrical company which twice a week exhibited their pieces in the theatre of Trianon.

These theatrical performances were quite as much the queen’s delight as her pastoral occupations in her farm cottages, and Marie Antoinette was unwearied in learning and studying her parts.  She had chosen for teachers two pensioned actors, Caillot and Dazincourt, who had to come every day to Trianon to teach to the noble group of actors the small operas, vaudevilles, and dramas, which had been chosen for representation, and in which the queen naturally always played the part of first amateur, while the princesses, the wives of the Counts de Provence and Artois, the two Countesses de Polignac, undertook the other parts, even those of gentlemen, when the two brothers of the king, the only male members of this theatrical company, could not assume all the gentlemen’s parts.

At first the audience at these representations was very limited.  Only the king, the princes and the princesses of the royal household, not engaged in the performance, constituted the audience; but afterward it was found that to encourage the actors a little, a larger audience was needed; then the boxes were filled with the governesses of the princesses, the queen’s waiting-women, whose sisters and daughters with a few other select ladies had been invited.

It was natural that those who had been thus preferred, and who enjoyed the privilege of seeing the Queen of France, the princes and princesses, appear as actors, should be full of admiration and applause at the talents displayed by the royal troupe; and as they alone formed the select audience, whose presence had for object to animate the artistes, they had also assumed the duty to excite and to vitalise the zeal and the fire of the players by their enthusiasm and by their liberal praises.

This applause of a grateful public blinded the royal actors as to their real merits, and excited in them the ambition to exhibit their artistic talents before a larger audience and to be admired.  Consequently, the queen granted to the officers of the lifeguard and to the masters of the king’s stalls and to their brothers, admittance into the theatre; the gentlemen and ladies of the court had seats in the gilt boxes; a larger number of ladies were invited, and soon from all sides came requests for tickets of admission to the theatrical performances in the Trianon.