In the “Ménagier de Paris,” compiled about the year 1393, its author, addressing his young wife, treats briefly of the behaviour of a woman when she is walking out, and especially when passing along the streets of a town, or going to church. “As you go,” he says, “look straight before you, with your eye-lids low and fixed, looking forward to the ground, at five toises (thirty feet) before you, and not looking at, or turning your eyes, to man or woman who may be to your right or left, nor looking upwards, nor changing your look from one place to another, nor laughing, nor stopping to speak to anybody in the street” (vol. i. p. 15). It must be confessed that this is, in some points, rather hard counsel for a lady to follow; but it is consistent with the general system of formalities of behaviour in the middle ages, upon which the ladies gladly took their revenge when removed from constraint. When two or more persons walked together, it was the custom to hold each other by the hands, not to walk arm-in-arm, which appears to be a very modern practice. In the romance of “Ogier le Danois,” the emperor and Ogier, when reconciled, are thus represented, walking in a friendly manner hand in hand. The ladies in our last engraving are walking in this manner; and in our next (No. 197),--taken from a copy, given in M. du Sommerard’s “Album,” from a manuscript in the library of the arsenal at Paris, written and illuminated for a prince of the house of Burgundy, in the fifteenth century,--the lords and ladies of a noble or princely household are represented as walking out in the same manner. It is well known that the court of Burgundy, in the fifteenth century, offered the model of strict etiquette. This illustration gives us also a very good picture of a street scene of the period to which it belongs. The height of gentility, however, at least, in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries, seems to have been to hold the lady by the finger only. It is in this manner that, in the romance of “Ogier le Danois,” the hero holds the princess Gloriande-- _Donques enmainne le bon Danois Ogier,_ _E Gloriande_, qui par le doit le tient._ --Roman d’Ogier, p. 110. So, in the romance of “La Violette,” at the festivities given by the king, the guests “distributed themselves in couples in the hall (_i. e._ a gentleman with a lady), _one taking the other by the finger_, and so they arranged themselves two and two”-- _Quant il orent assés deduit,_ _Par la sale s’acoinsent tuit;_ _Li uns prent l’autre par le doi,_ _Si s’arangierent doi et doi._ --Roman de la Violette, p. 10. [Illustration: _No. 197. A Promenade Scene in the Fifteenth Century._] In the curious poem entitled “La Court de Paradis,” the sainted ladies in heaven are represented as thus walking and holding each other by the finger,-- _L’une tint l’autre par les dois._ --Barbazan, iii. 139.