§52                   MODERN   CIVILIZATION

the chief cnrver and all the services connected with the
supplies of the table; the officers of the kings buttery,
the royal cooks, the common pantry, the common
wine cellars, the common kitchen,1 the fruit-room, and
the wood-house, where fuel was stored. The grand
chamberlain had charge of the gentlemen of the bed-
chamber, pages, ushers, valets, footmen, cloak-bearers,
gun-bearers, barbers, upholsterers, clockmakers, wait-
ers, doctors, officers of the wardrobe, the closet and the
storeroom. The king had also a military household,
which was quite an army: the life-guards, the royal
body-guard, the provost guards, Swiss guards, gen-
darmes, the light cavalry, musketeers, the regiment of
French guards and the regiment of Swiss guards.
Under the grand equerry of France was the whole
personnel of the stables, squires, pages, lackeys, super-
intendents of the stables; under the grand master of the
hounds and the grand falconer were all the depart-
ments of the chase, the packs of dogs for hunting hare,
or for deer, two casts of falcons for the kite, casts for
the hare, for crows, ducks, magpies and herons. In
the annual entitled the "Register of France," the list
of all this personnel fills more than 500 pages.

To this crowd of people whose functions kept them
near the king is to be added all the lords coming to
Versailles to visit His Majesty. The custom of gather-
ing about the king had become quite general among the
French nobility; Louis XIV. made it almost an obliga-
tion ; he wanted the nobles of birth to live near him;
each day he made his rounds to see if any one was

1 Of these two services, one was especially for the king, the
ather for the people of his household.