He often gave magnificent balls, at which he displayed all the
accomplishments of his nieces and the sumptuous splendour of his
furniture. At such entertainments, always followed by a grand banquet,
he was wont to show a liberality worthy of crowned heads. One day, after
the feast, he announced that a lottery would be held in his palace.

Accordingly, all the guests repaired to his superb gallery, which had
just been brilliantly decorated with paintings by Romanelli, and here,
spread out upon countless tables, we saw pieces of rare porcelain,
scent-bottles of foreign make, watches of every size and shape, chains of
pearls or of coral, diamond buckles and rings, gold boxes adorned by
portraits set in pearls or in emeralds, fans of matchless elegance,--in a
word, all the rarest and most costly things that luxury and fashion could
invent.

The Queens distributed the tickets with every appearance of honesty and
good faith. But I had reason to remark, by what happened to myself, that
the tickets had been registered beforehand. The young Queen, who felt
her garter slipping off, came to me in order to tighten it. She handed
me her ticket to hold for a moment, and when she had fastened her garter,
I gave her back my ticket instead of her own. When the Cardinal from his
dais read out the numbers in succession, my number won a portrait of the
King set in brilliants, much to the surprise of the Queen-mother and his
Eminence; they could not get over it.

To me this lottery of the Rue Neuve-des-Petits-Changes

[The gallery to which the Marquise alludes is to-day called the
Manuscript Gallery. It belongs to the Royal Library in the Rue de