Note 4 — Chapter VIII

The Newsletters say that there were 7000 wax lights, which alone cost over 8000 ducats, the cost of this one day's feast being 300,000 ducats—afterwards increased to 500,000 ducats. This enormous expenditure shocked everybody who thought about the matter. "The gossips," says the Newsletter, "assert that this great event, which had no other end than pastime and pleasure, which indeed was pure ostentation was to show our friend Cardinal Richelieu that there is plenty more money left in the world to punish his King." But many persons who dared in the subsequent carnival to blame this waste found themselves in the dungeons a few days afterwards; and several priests who preached before Olivares at St. Geronimo in the ensuing Lenten retreat, and ventured to denounce such wicked extravagance, were banished from Court. Rodriguez Villa's Newsletters have much to say about this.