The New International Encyclopædia/Quadrille (card game)

QUADRILLE. A game of cards which, as its name denotes, is played by four persons. The number of cards employed is forty, the tens, nines, and eights being discarded from the pack. The rank and order of the cards in each suit vary according as they are or are not trumps, and are different in the black and red suits. The ace of spades is always the highest trump, and is called Spadille; the ace of clubs or Basto is always the third highest trump; while the deuce of spades or clubs, or the seven of hearts or diamonds, known as Manille, is the second highest trump, according to the suit which is the trump, being always of the trump suit. When the black suits are not trumps, the black cards rank as in whist; and when they are trumps the order is the same with the exception as above mentioned of the deuce, which (in the trump suit only) becomes Manille, the deuce of the black suit which is not trumps retaining its position as the lowest card. The game is now practically obsolete, and has a value only to the student of late seventeenth and early eighteenth century customs and literature. It was complicated by a great number of conditions, making a complete description of it here impossible, but a good description of the game of Ombre or L'hombre, practically the same game as quadrille, except that it was arranged for three players, will be found in Pope's Rape of the Lock.