of the office of the stables during her son’s
minority; there are two hundred and fifteen grooms
on duty, and about as many horses kept at the king’s
expense for various other persons, entire strangers
to the department.[12] What a nest of parasites on
this one branch of the royal tree! Elsewhere
I find Madame Elisabeth, so moderate, consuming fish
amounting to 30,000 francs per annum; meat and game
to 70,000 francs; candles to 60,000 francs; Mesdames
burn white and yellow candles to the amount of 215,068
francs; the light for the queen comes to 157,109 francs.
The street at Versailles is still shown, formerly
lined with stalls, to which the king’s valets
resorted to nourish Versailles by the sale of his
dessert. There is no article from which the
domestic insects do not manage to scrape and glean
something. The king is supposed to drink orgeat
and lemonade to the value of 2,190 francs. “The
grand broth, day and night,” which Mme.
Royale, aged six years, sometimes drinks, costs 5,201
francs per annum. Towards the end of the preceding
reign[13] the femmes-de-chambre enumerate in the Dauphine’s
outlay “four pairs of shoes per week; three ells
of ribbon per diem, to tie her dressing-gown; two
ells of taffeta per diem, to cover the basket in which
she keeps her gloves and fan.” A few years
earlier the king paid 200,000 francs for coffee, lemonade,
chocolate, barley-water, and water-ices; several persons
were inscribed on the list for ten or twelve cups
a day, while it was estimated that the coffee, milk
and bread each morning for each lady of the bed-chamber
cost 2,000 francs per annum.[14] We can readily understand
how, in households thus managed, the purveyors are
willing to wait. They wait so well that often
under Louis XV they refuse to provide and “hide
themselves.” Even the delay is so regular
that, at last; they are obliged to pay them five per
cent. interest on their advances; at this rate, in
1778, after all Turgot’s economic reforms, the
king still owes nearly 800,000 livres to his wine
merchant, and nearly three millions and a half to
his purveyor.[15] The same disorder exists in the
houses which surround the throne. “Mme.
de Guéménée owes 60,000 livres to her shoe-maker,
16,000 livres to her paper-hanger, and the rest in
proportion.” Another lady, whom the Marquis
de Mirabeau sees with hired horses, replies at his
look of astonishment, “It is not because there
are not seventy horses in our stables, but none of
them are able to walk to day."[16] Mme. de Montmorin,
on ascertaining that her husband’s debts are
greater than his property, thinks she can save her
dowry of 200,000 livres, but is informed that she had
given security for a tailor’s bill, which, “incredible
and ridiculous to say, amounts to the sum of 180,000
livres."[17] “One of the decided manias of these
days,” says Mme. d’Oberkirk, “is
to be ruined in everything and by everything.”
“The two brothers Villemer build country cottages
at from 500,000 to 600,000 livres; one of them keeps