They held a meeting at which they resolved that no member of their families should attend, and carried out their resolution so obstinately that at five o'clock, when the dancing was to commence, except the royal princesses there were only three ladies in the room.

The king, who, following the example of Louis XIV., acted on these occasions as his own master of ceremonies, was forced to send special and personal orders to some of those who had absented themselves to attend without delay.

And so by seven o'clock twelve or fourteen couples were collected[6] (the number of persons admitted to such entertainments was always extremely small), and the rude disloyalty of the protest was to outward appearance effaced by the submission of the recusants.
But all the troubles which arose out of the wedding festivities were not so easily terminated.

Little as was the good-will which subsisted between Louis XV.

and the Parisians, the civic authorities thought their own credit at stake in doing appropriate honor to an occasion so important as the marriage of the heir of the monarchy, and on the 30th of May they closed a succession of balls and banquets by a display of fire-works, in which the ingenuity of the most celebrated artists had been exhausted to outshine all previous displays of the sort.