"Si comme fols et folles sont,
Qui pour gagner, au bordel vont;
Jouent aux dez, aux cartes, aux tables,
Qui à Dieu ne sont délectables."
The manuscript containing the verses as they are here given is in the Bibliothèque du Roi; but certainly it is not of earlier date than 1450; while in another manuscript, of the same romance, apparently about a hundred years older, also preserved in the Bibliothèque du Roi, the word "Cartes" is not to be found in the corresponding verse, which is as follows:
"Jouent à geux de dez ou de tables."
Meerman [81] imagined that he had discovered a positive date for the early use of cards in France, in the work known as the Chronicle of Petit-Jehan de Saintré, but which was, in fact, written by Antoine de Lassale, in 1459. [82] Saintré had been one of the pages of Charles V, and on his being appointed carver to the King on account of his good conduct, the governor of the pages is represented as giving them a lecture on their bad courses: "Observe your companion here, who, through his good conduct, has acquired the favour of the King and Queen, and of all; while you are dicers and card-players, keeping bad company, and haunting taverns and cabarets." [83] The fact of the work having been composed in 1459, however, renders it of no authority on the question; and even if it had been written by Jehan Saintré himself, there cannot be a doubt that the term "Cartes" is an interpolation.
The term "joueux de cartes," card-players, is indeed to be found in the earliest printed editions of the work, and also in a manuscript preserved in the Bibliothèque du Roi; but then this manuscript does not appear to be of an earlier date than the latter end of the fifteenth century, and there is also reason to believe that it is the identical manuscript from which the work was first printed. The word Cartes, however, is not to be found in a manuscript copy of the work in the library of the Sorbonne, nor in another in the library of St. Germains. The latter is much older than either of the others. Mons. Duchesne says that, in 1583, it belonged to Claude d'Expilly, and that these two verses, which show that it was even then considered an old manuscript, are written in the first folio:
"Ce livre soit gardé, non tant pour sa beauté,
Que pour le saint respect de son antiquité."