nteel taste, an effect of the preceding, is the chase. It costs the
king from 1,100,000 to 1,200,000 livres a year, and requires 280
horses besides those of the two stables. A more varied or more complete
equipment could not be imagined: a pack of hounds for the boar, another
for the wolf another for the roe-buck, a cast (of hawks) for the crow,
a cast for the magpie, a cast for merlins, a cast for hares, a cast for
the fields. In 1783, 179,194 livres are expended for feeding horses, and
53,412 livres for feeding dogs.[2116] The entire territory, ten leagues
around Paris, is a game-preserve; "not a gun could be fired there;[2117]
accordingly the plains are seen covered with partridges accustomed to
man, quietly picking up the grain and never stirring as he passes." Add
to this the princes' captaincies, extending as far as Villers-Cotterets
and Orleans; these form an almost continuous circle around Paris,
thirty leagues in circumference, where game, protected, replaced and
multiplied, swarms for the pleasure of the king. The park of Versailles
alone forms an enclosure of more than ten leagues. The forest
of Rambouillet embraces 25,000 arpents (30,000 acres). Herds of
seventy-five and eighty stags are encountered around Fontainebleau. No
true hunter could read the minute-book of the chase without feeling an
impulse of envy. The wolf-hounds run twice a week, and they take forty
wolves a year. Between 1743 and 1744 Louis XV runs down 6,400 stags.
Louis XVI writes, August 30th, 1781: "Killed 460 head to day." In 1780
he brings down 20,534 head; in 1781, 20,291; in fourteen years, 189,251
head, besides 1,254 stags, while boars and bucks are proportionate; and
it must be noted that this is all done by his own hand, since his
parks approach his houses.--Such, in fine, is the character of
a "well-appointed household," that is to say, provided with its
dependencies and services. Everything is within reach; it is a complete
world in itself and self-sufficient. One exalted being attaches to and
gathers around it, with universal foresight and minuteness of detail,
every appurtenance it employs or can possibly employ.--Thus, each
prince, each princess has a professional surgery and a chapel;[2118] it
would not answer for the almoner who says mass or the doctor who looks
after their health to be obtained outside. So much stronger is the
reason that the king should have ministrants of this stamp; his chapel
embraces seventy-five almoners