de Tallard made 115,000 livres income out of her place of governess to the children of France, because her salary was increased 35,000 livres for each child." The Duc de Penthievre, as grand admiral, received an anchorage due on all vessels "entering the ports and rivers of France," which produced annually 91,484 francs.Mme.de Lamballe, superintendent of the queen's household, inscribed for 6,000 francs, gets 50,000.[1414] The Duc de Gevres gets 50,000 crowns[1415] by one show of fireworks out of the fragments and scaffolding which belong to him by virtue of his office.[1416]--Grand officers of the palace, governors of royal establishments, captains of captaincies, chamberlains, equerries, gentlemen in waiting, gentlemen in ordinary, pages, governors, almoners, chaplains, ladies of honor, ladies of the bedchamber, ladies in waiting on the King, the Queen, on Monsieur, on Madame, on the Comte D'Artois, on the Comtesse D'Artois, on Mesdames, on Madame Royale, on Madame Elisabeth, in each princely establishment and elsewhere, hundreds of places provided with salaries and accessories are without any service to perform, or simply answer a decorative purpose.
"Mme.

de Laborde has just been appointed keeper of the queen's bed, with 12,000 francs pension out of the king's privy purse; nothing is known of the duties of this position, as there has been no place of this kind since Anne of Austria." The eldest son of M.de Machault is appointed intendant of the classes.

"This is one of the employments called complimentary: it is worth 18,000 livres income to sign one's name twice a year." And likewise with the post of secretary-general of the Swiss guards, worth 30,000 livres a year and assigned to the Abbe Barthelemy; and the same with the post of secretary-general of the dragoons, worth 20,000 livres a year, held in turn by Gentil Bernard and by Laujon, two small pocket poets. ?--It would be simpler to give the money without the place.

There is, indeed, no end to them.

On reading various memoirs day after day it seems as if the treasury was open to plunder.