s been seen at one sitting to lose sixty thousand crowns,
although he had only inherited twenty thousand from his father; and a
man named Jonas has hired a house in the Faubourg St. Germain, in order
to hold one of these academies for a fortnight during the fair, and for
this house he has given fourteen hundred francs." [136]

D'Aubigny and several other chroniclers bear similar testimony; and
while Bassompierre boasts of having won five hundred thousand pistoles
in one year (each pistole being little inferior in value to our own
sovereign), he nevertheless gives us plainly to understand that the King
was a more reckless gamester than himself, a fact corroborated moreover
by Sully, who tells us in his Memoirs, "The sums, at least the principal
ones, that I employed on the personal expenses of Henry, were twenty-two
thousand pistoles, for which he sent to me on the 18th of January 1609,
and which he had lost at play; a hundred thousand livres to one party,
and fifty-one thousand to another, likewise play debts, due to Edward
Fernandes, a Portuguese.... A thousand pistoles for future play; Henry
at first took only five hundred, but he subsequently sent Beringhen for
the remainder for a different purpose. I carried him a thousand more for
play when I went with the Chancellor to Fontainebleau." [137]

Only a short time subsequent to the establishment of the Court at the
Louvre, what neither the desire and authority of the King himself nor
the arts of his mistress had been able to accomplish, was achieved
through the agency of the Queen's favourite attendant, Leonora
Galigai,[138] who had accompanied her royal mistress and foster-sister
from Italy at the period of her marriage. On the formation of the
Queen's household, Henry had, among other appointments, honoured Madame
de Richelieu[139] with the post of Mistress of the Robes; but Marie de
Medicis having decided on bestowing this charge upon Leonora, refused to
permit the Countess to perform the duties of her office, and requested
the King to transfer it to her Italian _protegee_. This, however, was a
concession to which Henry would not consent; and while the Queen
persisted in not permitting the services of Madame de Richelieu, her
royal bridegroom as pertinaciously negatived the appointment of
_parvenue_ lady of honour. The high-born countess bore the affront thus
offered to her with the complacent dignity befitting her proud station;
but such was far from being the case