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The plans of the "Palais-Chateau-Ermitage" of Marly-le-Roi were from the fertile brain of Mansart, and were arranged with considerable ingenuity, if not taste, generously interspersed with lindens and truly magnificent garden plots. It cost a hundred thousand écus to merely lead the water up to it.
These were the Rue Babille, the Rue Sauval, the Rue des Deux Ecus, and the Rue de Viarmes, this last pallid from its proximity to the millers' stores, and at four o'clock lively by reason of the corn exchange held there. It was generally at this point that they started on their round.
This, one reads in the court chronicle, and further that: "The royal family usually lost a hundred thousand écus at play at each visit." One "gentleman croupier" gained as much as three thousand louis at a single sitting.
He found the public treasury in imminent danger of bankruptcy, and he saved it by obtaining three millions of ecus from the Roman clergy. Through this munificent donation the minister was relieved from all disquietude as regarded finance, and so was enabled to direct his energies to the more difficult task of adapting the administration to the new institutions.
The Prince de Condé having been discharged from prison on October 20th, 1619, the king forwarded to him his commission of viceroy, and the Company of Rouen granted him a thousand écus. The prince gave five hundred écus to the Récollets for the construction of a seminary at Quebec, and this was his only gift to the settlement of New France.
The Chief-President was more brazen and more fortunate; he made so many promises, showed so much meanness, employed so much roguery, that abusing by these means the feebleness and easiness of the Regent, whom he laughed at, he obtained more than 100,000 ecus for his expenses.
"It will not be sent," returned Olympia. "But hark! What tumult is this?" "They are battering the palace-doors," said Eugene, who, in spite of the steward's entreaties, had approached the window and was looking down upon the mob. The palace de Soissons fronted the Poie Deux Ecus, from which it was separated by a tall iron railing.
The man cast a troubled look toward his family, standing close behind him. He hesitated a minute longer, and then suddenly made up his mind to obey the order. "I was coming home one night at about ten o'clock, the night after you got here. You and your soldiers had taken more than fifty ecus worth of forage from me, as well as a cow and two sheep.
Mme. du Barry was never an implacable enemy; she was too kind-hearted for that; thus, when her friend D'Aiguillon insisted on depriving De Choiseul of his fortune, she managed to procure for the latter a pension of sixty-thousand livres and one million écus in cash, in spite of the opposition of D'Aiguillon. After the fall of that minister all the princes of the blood were glad to pay her homage.
Finally, we were able to retire for the night, and I dreamed of all I had learned from him. Fifty écus; that was one hundred and fifty francs! I had nothing like that great sum. Perhaps if our luck still continued I could, if I saved sou by sou, get together the hundred and fifty francs. But it would take time.
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