Sometimes she explains herself plainly:--`You believe that
everybody plays as honestly as yourself? Call to mind what took
place lately at the Hotel de la Vieuville. Do you remember
that _ROBBERY?_'

The favour of that court, so much coveted, seemed to her to be
purchased at too high a price if it was to be gained by ruinous
complaisances. She trembled every time her son left her to go to
Versailles. She says:--`He tells me he is going to play with his
young master;[54] I shudder at the thought. Four hundred
pistoles are very easily lost: _ce n'est rien pour Admete et
c'est beaucoup pour lui_.[55] If Dangeau is in the game he
will win all the pools: he is an eagle. Then will come to pass,
my daughter, all that God may vouchsafe--_il en arivera, ma
fille, tout ce qu'il plaira a Dieu_.'


[54] The Dauphin.

[55] `It is nothing for Admetus, but 'tis much for him.'


And again, `The game of _Hoca_ is prohibited at Paris _UNDER THE
PENALTY OF DEATH_, and yet it is played at court. Five thousand
pistoles before dinner is nothing. That game is a regular cut-
throat.'

Hoca was prodigiously unfavourable to the players; the latter had
only twenty-eight chances against thirty. In the seventeenth