The House of de Mailly

by Margaret Horton Potter

"A bad idea," muttered Richelieu to the Baron. "I kept my ladies in better training—when I had them."

It was fifteen minutes' rapid walk from the Procope to the Hôtel de Gêvres. From the Quai des Tournelles the six proceeded to the Pont St. Michel, over the river, across the island, and to the new city by the Pont au Change, at the east end of which, near the Place du Chat, stood the most recent and most noted gambling-house in Paris. Three or four lanterns, shining dimly through the dripping night, lighted the doorways, which were open to the weather. Richelieu, d'Holbach, d'Epernon, and Henri entered together, with Claude and de Gêvres close behind. It was Richelieu who accosted the manager of the house in the entresol; for the owner of the place was not desirous of recognition. M. Basquinet, discerning that the new-comers were of rank, in spite of the fact that they came on foot, at once offered a private room.

"The devil, good cit, d'ye take us for a pack of farmers-general? By my marrow, I've scarcely livres enough to grease the dice-cup, let alone paying your nobility prices for new wine and bad rum. Private room—ha! excellent, you tax-collector, excellent, excellent!"

So spake Richelieu, in his favorite badaud, with a tone that no dweller in the Court of Miracles could have bettered for its purpose. The little party smiled covertly at sight of the landlord's crestfallen air, and then the other five followed their new plebeian leader up the broad ancestral staircase, leaving behind the steady murmur of voices and the chink of coin which had reached their ears from the chance-machine rooms on either side of the hallway. On the second floor were the public rooms for played games; on the third, private apartments for such as chose to make a retreat of the place. And, in truth, many a well-known quarrel had fomented, and many a desperate duel already been fought, in those chambers, which of old had sheltered the royal and noble guests of the family de Gêvres.

The dice-room, the destination of Monsieur le Duc's present distinguished company, was very large, having once been the grand salon of the house. It was well filled by this hour, thick with smoke, heavy-aired with the fumes of mulled wine, and alive with the clack of the implements of the game and the subdued murmur of exclamations and utterances. The six gentlemen made their way to a table in the far corner of the room from which the door was invisible; and, seating themselves, they called at once for the cups, English pipes, and English rum.

"By all means, rum," nodded the Baron d'Holbach. "What other beverage would harmonize with this scene? We are surrounded by those a step lower than the bourgeoisie. For the time we also are lower than the bourgeoisie."

"And by to-morrow we shall have still stronger means of appreciation," retorted d'Epernon, "for our heads will feel as those of the bourgeoisie never did."

The rum was brought, however, together with dice, and those long-stemmed clay pipes of which one broke three or four of an evening, and but rarely drew more than one mouthful of smoke from a light. Still imitating the manners of those about them, each two gentlemen played with a single cup, thus doing away with any possibility of loaded dice. Unlike the common people, however, they used no money on the table; perhaps for the simplest of reasons—that they had no money to use. "Poor as a nobleman, rich as a bourgeois," was a common enough expression at that day, and as true as such sayings generally are. How debts of honor were paid at Versailles none but those concerned ever knew. But paid they always were, and that within the time agreed upon; and there was no newly invented extravagance, no fresh and useless method of expenditure for baubles or jewelled garments, that every courtier did not feel it a duty as well as pleasure to indulge at once. For the last twenty-five years there had been, as for the next five there would be, a continually increasing costliness in the mode of Court life, and a consequent diminution in Court incomes, until the end—the end of all things for France's highest and best—should come with merciful, swift fury.

Each member of the party, this evening, played with him in whose company he had walked from the café: de Gêvres and the Count; Richelieu and d'Holbach; d'Epernon and Mailly-Nesle. The three games were in marked contrast to those carried on about them. Not a word relative to losses or winnings was spoken. The stakes were agreed upon almost in whispers; the cubes were rattled and thrown—once; then again from the other side. The differences were noted mentally. Winner and loser sipped their rum, drew at a pipe, and made a new stake. Sometimes ten minutes would be spent in watching the noisy eagerness of men at a neighboring table, for that was the chief object in their coming to-night.

The great hall was filled with those of an essentially low order. Coarse faces, coarse manners, coarse garments, and coarse oaths abounded there, though now and again might be found a velvet coat, a lace ruffle, and a manner badly aped from the supposed elegancies of the Court. A strange and motley throng gathered from all Paris wherever this common vice held men in its grip. Here those from the criminal quarters, from the Faubourg St. Antoine, from the streets of petty shopkeepers and tradesmen, from the little bourgeoisie, came to mingle together, indiscriminately, equalized, rendered careless of the origin of companions by their common love of the dice. Here were men of all ages, from the fierce stripling who regarded a franc as a fortune, to the senile creature, glued to his chair, the cubes rattling continually in his trembling cup, and the varying luck of the evening his life and death. All the pettiness and some of the nobility to be found in mankind were portrayed here, could those who had come to study have read aright. D'Holbach, the philosopher, doubtless did so, for men had been his mental food for many years. Nevertheless he said nothing to Richelieu of what he discovered; but took snuff when he lost, and puffed at his pipe when he won, and cogitated alone among those whom he knew so well.