palace to celebrate the event of the morning; and, as an invariable part
of such entertainments, a table was set out for the then fashionable game
of lansquenet, at which the king himself played, with the royal family and
all the principal persons of the court. In the course of the evening Marie
Antoinette won more than seven hundred pounds; but she was rather
embarrassed than gratified by her good fortune. She had tried to lose the
money back; but, as she had been unable to succeed, the next morning she
sent the greater part of it to the curates of Versailles to be distributed
among the poor, and gave the rest to some of her own attendants who seemed
to her to need it, being determined, as she said, to keep none of it for
herself.

The winter revived the apprehensions concerning the king's health; he was
manifestly sinking into the grave, while

"That which should accompany old age,
As love, obedience, honor, troops of friends,
He might not look to have."

His very mistress began with great zeal than ever, though with no better
taste, to seek to conciliate the dauphiness. She tried to purchase her
good-will by a bribe. She was aware that the princess greatly admired
diamonds, and, learning that a jeweler of Paris had a pair of ear-rings of
a size and brilliancy so extraordinary that the price which he asked for
them was 700,000 francs, she persuaded the Comte de Noailles to carry them
to Marie Antoinette to show them, with a message from herself that if the
dauphiness liked to keep them, she would induce the king to make her a
present of them.[7] Whether Marie Antoinette admired them or not, she had
far too proper a sense of dignity to allow herself to be entrapped into
the acceptance of an obligation by one whom she so deservedly despised.