The Cours la Reine, created by Marie de Médicis, was outside of Paris. It was a broad path, fifteen hundred and forty common steps long, with a "round square," or rond-point, in its centre. In that sheltered path, the fine world, good and bad, displayed its toilets and its equipages.
Mlle. de Scudéry has given us a description of it at the hour when it was most frequented. Two of her characters entered Paris by the village of Chaillot.
Coming into the city, where Hermogène led Bélésis, one finds beside the beautiful river four great alleys, so broad, so straight, and so shaded by the great trees which form them, that one could not imagine a more agreeable promenade. And this is the place where all the ladies come in the evening in little open chariots, and where all the men follow them on horseback; so that having liberty to approach either one or the other, or all of them, as they go up and down the paths they all promenade and talk together; and this is doubtless very diverting.
Hermogène and Bélésis having penetrated into the Cours,
they saw the great alleys full of little chariots, all painted and gilded; sitting in the chariots were the most beautiful ladies of Suze (Paris), and near the ladies were infinite numbers of gentlemen of quality, admirably well mounted and magnificently dressed, going and coming, saluting as they passed.
In the summer they lingered late in the Cours la Reine, and ended the evening at Renard's. Marie de Médicis and Anne of Austria were rarely absent.
Close by the Champs-Élysées lay a forest, through which the huntsman passed to hunt the wolf in the dense woods of the Bois de Boulogne. In the distance could be seen the village of Chaillot, perched on a height amidst fields and vines. Market gardens covered the quarters of Ville l'Evêque and the Chaussée d'Antin.
Mademoiselle was installed with royal magnificence at the Tuileries. In her own words: "They made my house, and they gave me an equipage much grander than any daughter of France had ever had."
Thirty years later she was still happily surrounded by the retinue provided by her far-seeing guardians. Her servitors were of every grade, from the lowest, who prepared a pathway for her feet, to the highest, whose service added dignity to her presence. By investing her with her nucleus of domestic tributaries, her friends had established her importance, even in her infancy, by manifestations that could not be disputed. In that day people were obliged to attach importance to such details. But a short time had passed since brutal force had been the only recognised right; and it was the way of the world to judge the grandeur of a prince by the length and volume of his train. It was because La Grande Mademoiselle had, from earliest youth, possessed an army of squires, of courtiers, of valets, and of serving-men and serving-women—a horde beginning with the fine milord and ending with the hare-faced scullion, seen now and then in some shadowy retreat of the palace, low-browed, down-trodden, looking out with dazzled eyes upon the world of life and luxury,—it was because she had been a ruler even in her swaddling bands, that she could aspire, naturally and without overweening arrogance, to the hands of the most powerful sovereigns. "The sons of France," says a document of 1649, "are provided with just such officials as surround the King; but they are less numerous.... The Princes have officers in accordance with their revenues and in accordance with the rank that they hold in the kingdom."[8]
The same document furnishes us with details of the installation of Anne of Austria. If, when we estimate the equipage of Mademoiselle, we reduce it by half of the estimate of the Queen's equipage, we fall short of the reality. Like an army in campaign, a Court ought to be sufficient unto itself, able to meet all its requirements. The upper domestic retinue of the Queen comprised more than one hundred persons, maîtres-d'hôtel or stewards, cup-bearers, carvers, secretaries, physicians, surgeons, oculists, musicians, squires, almoners, nine chaplains, "her confessor," a common confessor, and too many other kinds of employees to be enumerated. Under all these officials, each one of whom had his own especial underlings, were equal numbers of valets and of chambermaids who assured the service of the apartments. The Court cooking kept busy one hundred and fifty-nine drilled knife-sharpeners, soup-skimmers, roast-hasteners, and water-handers, or people to hand water as the cooks needed it for their mixtures. There were other servitors whose business it was to await the beck and call of their superiors,—call-boys, always waiting for signals. Then came the busy world of the stables; then fifty merchants or shop-men, and an indefinite number of artisans of all the orders of all the trades. In all there were between six and seven hundred souls, not counting the valets of the valets or the grand "charges," the officials close to the Queen, the Queen's chancellor, the chevaliers d'honneur, or gentlemen-in-waiting, the ladies in-waiting, and maids of honour.