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We had promised ourselves a most delightful evening, and had all come with the expectation of finding considerable amusement in watching the countenances and conduct of those who were not aware of the real state of the game, whilst such as were admitted into my entire confidence, were sanguine in their hopes and expectations of employing the simple beauty of the maiden of Versailles to crush the aspiring views of my haughty rival of the <Parc-aux- Cerfs>. This was, indeed, the point at which I aimed, and my further intention was to request the king to portion off mademoiselle Julie, so that she might be ever removed from again crossing my path.
Arnold says, lack morality, there is no such flagrant vileness within her walls as the corruptions of the ancien régime; no such impudent affronting of the decencies of life as made the parc aux cerfs for ever infamous, and his Christian Majesty, Louis the Fifteenth, a worthy compeer of Tiberius; no such shameless wickedness as made the orgies of the Duke of Orleans and the Abbé Dubois match the worst saturnalia of Nero.
Hitherto they had acted as auxiliaries for other parties. Now they summoned all their energies, and became principals in the conflict. France issued a formal declaration of war against England and Austria, raised an army of one hundred thousand men, and the debauched king himself, Louis XV., left his Pare Aux Cerfs and placed himself at the head of the army. Marshal Saxe was the active commander.
They drank, they sang, they danced and conducted, or misconducted, themselves in such a thoroughly shameless fashion that Bigot, Varin, and other experts of the Court swore that the petits appartements of Versailles, or even the royal fetes of the Parc aux cerfs, could not surpass the high life and jollity of the Palace of the Intendant.
The countless memoirs of that wicked age have however, exposed to the indignant eye of posterity the regal debaucheries of Versailles and the pollutions of the Pare aux Cerfs, that infamous seraglio which cost the State one hundred millions of livres, at the lowest estimate. And this was but a part of the great system of waste and folly.
Rochester House was a magnificent residence on the banks of the canal. The large extent of the garden isolated it in an unusual degree from the annoyances of neighbourhood. It seemed the parc aux cerfs of some great nobleman or millionaire.
Unknown to me were those dance-halls, public or other, open to any of those thirty thousand women who are permitted to sell themselves in Paris; I had heard of the saturnalia of all ages, of every imaginable orgy, from Babylon to Rome, from the temple of Priapus to the Parc-aux- Cerfs, and I have always seen written on the sill of that door the word, "Pleasure."
A little after midnight, when all was still, the priest, Father Le Bel, was aroused and ordered to go at once to the Galerie des Cerfs, or Hall of Stags, in another part of the palace. When he asked why, he was told: "It is by the order of her majesty the Swedish queen." The priest, wondering, hurried on his garments.
Father Le Bel at once left the Galerie des Cerfs and went into the queen's apartment, with the smell of blood in his nostrils. He found her calm and ready to justify herself. Was she not still queen over all who had voluntarily become members of her suite? This had been agreed to in her act of abdication.
We never saw Les Cerfs at Tivoli, but we saw a woman walk down a rope in the midst of the fireworks, and I could not help shutting my eyes.
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