momentary fancy.

Sometimes the losses of the players at the tables were enormous; again,
nobles counted their gains by the hundred thousands. The youthful
granddaughter of the King, the Duchess of Bourgogne, lost at one time a
sum equaling 600,000 francs, which her doting grandfather paid, as he
also paid debts of the Duke of Bourgogne. During one night's play the
King himself lost a sum totaling "many millions." On occasion the
courtiers were entertained at festivities arranged for the heir to the
throne, or by the cardinal that was in residence at the chateau.
During masked balls held in the carnival season dancers sometimes
changed their costumes two or three times in an evening--one worn under
another being revealed by pulling a silken cord. Often well-tempered
confusion was caused by gay subterfuges--an exchange of masks, or the
imposing of one mask on another. The costumes were sumptuous beyond
words. "It is impossible to witness at one time more jewelry," naïvely
recited the _Mercure_ in setting forth the richness of a _cercle_ at
which the Court was present in 1707.

Let us read further from the _Mercure_ of the diversions that drove
dull care away at a Court carnival: "There have been this winter five
balls in five different apartments at Versailles, all so grand and so
beautiful that no other royal house in the world can show the like.
Entrance was given to masks only, and no persons presented themselves
without being disguised, unless they were of very high rank. . . .
People invent grotesque disguises, they revive old fashions, they
choose the most ridiculous things, and seek to make them as amusing as
possible. . . . Mgr. le Dauphin changed his disguise eight or ten
times each evening. M. Bérain had need of all his wit to furnish these
disguises, and of all his ingenuity to get them made up, since there