Between 1743 and 1744 Louis XV runs down 6,400 stags.  Louis XVI writes, August 30th, 1781:  “Killed 460 head to day.”  In 1780 he brings down 20,534 head; in 1781, 20,291; in fourteen years, 189,251 head, besides 1,254 stags, while boars and bucks are proportionate; and it must be noted that this is all done by his own hand, since his parks approach his houses. — Such, in fine, is the character of a " well-appointed household,” that is to say, provided with its dependencies and services.  Everything is within reach; it is a complete world in itself and self-sufficient.  One exalted being attaches to and gathers around it, with universal foresight and minuteness of detail, every appurtenance it employs or can possibly employ. — Thus, each prince, each princess has a professional surgery and a chapel;[18] it would not answer for the almoner who says mass or the doctor who looks after their health to be obtained outside.  So much stronger is the reason that the king should have ministrants of this stamp; his chapel embraces seventy-five almoners, chaplains, confessors, masters of the oratory, clerks, announcers, carpet-bearers, choristers, copyists, and composers of sacred music; his faculty is composed of forty-eight physicians, surgeons, apothecaries, oculists, operators, bone-setters, distillers, chiropodists and spagyrists (a species of alchemists).  We must still note his department of profane music, consisting of one hundred and twenty-eight vocalists, dancers, instrumentalists, directors and superintendents; his library corps of forty-three keepers, readers, interpreters, engravers, medallists, geographers, binders and printers; the staff of ceremonial display, sixty-two heralds, sword-bearers, ushers and musicians; the staff of housekeepers, consisting of sixty-eight marshals, guides and commissaries.  I omit other services in haste to reach the most important,- that of the table; a fine house and good housekeeping being known by the table.

There are three sections of the table service;[19] the first for the king and his younger children; the second, called the little ordinary, for the table of the grand-master, the grand-chamberlain and the princes and princesses living with the king; the third, called the great ordinary, for the grand-master’s second table, that of the butlers of the king’s household, the almoners, the gentlemen in waiting, and that of the valets-de-chambre, in all three hundred and eighty-three officers of the table and one hundred and three waiters, at an expense of 2,177,771 livres; besides this there are 389,173 livres appropriated to the table of Madame Elisabeth, and 1,093,547 livres for that of Mesdames, the total being 3,660,491 livres for the table.  The wine-merchant furnished wine to the amount of 300,000 francs per annum, and the purveyor game, meat and fish at a cost of 1,000,000 livres.  Only to fetch water from Ville-d’Avray, and to convey servants, waiters and provisions, required fifty horses hired at the rate of 70,591 francs per