Often well-tempered
confusion was caused by gay subterfuges--an exchange of masks, or the
imposing of one mask on another. The costumes were sumptuous beyond
words. "It is impossible to witness at one time more jewelry," naively
recited the _Mercure_ in setting forth the richness of a _cercle_ at
which the Court was present in 1707.
Let us read further from the _Mercure_ of the diversions that drove
dull care away at a Court carnival: "There have been this winter five
balls in five different apartments at Versailles, all so grand and so
beautiful that no other royal house in the world can show the like.
Entrance was given to masks only, and no persons presented themselves
without being disguised, unless they were of very high rank. . . .
People invent grotesque disguises, they revive old fashions, they
choose the most ridiculous things, and seek to make them as amusing as
possible. . . . Mgr. le Dauphin changed his disguise eight or ten
times each evening. M. Berain had need of all his wit to furnish these
disguises, and of all his ingenuity to get them made up, since there
was so little time between one ball and another. The prince did not
wish to be recognized, and all sorts of extraordinary disguises were
invented for him; frequently under the figures that concealed him, one
could not have told whether the person thus masked was tall or short,
fat or thin. Sometimes he had double masks, and under the first a mask
of wax so well made that, when he took off his first mask, people
fancied they saw the natural face, and he deceived everybody.
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