The latter was held as a screen while the
shirt was removed, and the night-dress was accepted from the hands of a
royal prince, or the Grand Chamberlain.
Having put on the dressing-gown, the King, with an inclination of the
head, dismissed the courtiers, to whom the ushers cried, "Gentlemen, pass
on!"
All those that were entitled to remain for the _petit coucher_--princes,
clergymen, officers, chosen intimates--then disposed themselves about the
bedchamber while the King submitted to the hands of his coiffeur and
received from the Grand Master of the Wardrobe the night-cap and
handkerchiefs. After bathing his face and hands in a silver basin held
by a royal prince or grand master, the _petit coucher_ was at an end.
The bathing apartments of Versailles were numerous and luxuriously
appointed, but, though the most trivial details in the daily life of His
Majesty were attended with imposing circumstance, there is no record of a
Ceremony of the King's Bath, nor do we know of any noble order at the
Grand Monarch's court that held the title of Knights of the Bath.
When the assemblage that witnessed the _petit coucher_ in the royal
apartment had dwindled one by one, according to precedent, the Master of
Versailles was, at last, free to do as he chose,--to play with his dogs
in an adjoining cabinet, or take his ease in pleasing solitude. Then, in
the familiar words of Samuel Pepys' immortal diary, "Home, and to bed.
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