Our little band now struggled with each other, to see who should form the largest bubble, and who should make it rise highest in the air: one of them waved her pocket-handkerchief to make it rise higher and higher, till the bubble burst, and the illusion was destroyed. Madame D’Hernilly, who recollected some verses on the subject of this amusement, took the opportunity of repeating them, and impressing their moral on the minds of her young audience.
See how the cherub children play And force the bubbles on their way, Which, as in various course they sail, Borne by the zephyr’s gentle gale, Catch the tints which Phœbus gives While the aërial globule lives; But soon it bursts, and all is gone, The children mourn their pleasure done. Say, do we not too often see Mankind in this same sport agree; Who their intrinsic good forego, For the bright gleams of outward show.
This amusement did not last longer than the morning, and at night our juvenile group were again at a loss for something to do. Adriana was once more the first to find out a new species of amusement. In hunting about, she, at length, discovered some cards, and immediately began, with great alacrity, to arrange files of soldiers and to build houses with the cards. The elder girls found a malicious pleasure in throwing down her houses, just as she had brought them to the last story; and in blowing upon her soldiers in order to make them fall, just before the file was properly arranged. As Adriana was good-tempered, she put up with their tricks quietly, though she meditated perhaps in her own mind some method of soon taking her revenge.
Madame D’Hernilly seized the occasion which the cards presented to her, to give the young people some account of the manner in which they were first introduced. Almost all historians agree in saying, that they imagine games with cards were first invented in the reign of Charles the Sixth of France, in order to procure that prince some amusement during his long illness. As a proof that this is the fact, they cite the register of the chamber of accounts, in which there is the following passage: “the sum of fifty-six _sous Parisis_, (which was a very considerable sum in those times), was paid to Jacquemin Gringonneur, a painter, for three packs of cards, adorned with gold and divers colours, and different devices.” This passage proves nothing more than that Gringonneur was a card-maker, but not the inventor of any game. In making further researches, we find that Charles the Fifth, predecessor of Charles the Sixth, had prohibited the playing at cards, and that they were already known in Spain towards the year 1330, under the name of _Naipes_.