And who was there left to wear gloves, in all the length and breadth of France? What was to become, in such an hour, of an industry which addressed itself to the pleasure-loving rich, and to the privileged classes? The rich? There were no more rich. Privilege—the title, the robe, the gown? Lost off in the wild scurry of fugitives! In the appalling reaction, such a harmless mark of elegance as the glove, became, so to speak, branded with horror. To be seen in gloves in those days was to be marked for a criminal against mankind; to be suspected of being a Royalist, a lover of the king, a Judas to the People. So we have the spectacle of the glovers, “plain men of business,” throwing over every material advantage, to hurl themselves and all they possessed into the French Revolution. “The Revolution!” cries M. Xavier Roux in his invaluable book, _The Glovers of Grenoble_, published for private circulation in that city in 1887, “they themselves desired it. They sacrificed to it their money and their effort.” Again he says: “It would seem as though, in their eyes, there were no longer practical ‘interests’; there were only _ideas_. Never, perhaps, as then, has a whole people forgotten its industry, it business relations, and suffered itself to be moved by principle alone.” And yet one spectacle more remains—the silent factories on the Isère. For the first time since the founding of its main industry and source of prosperity in the past, we behold the paradox of a gloveless Grenoble! CHAPTER VI. GLOVES IN MANY MARTS “She of the open soul and open door, With room about her hearth for all mankind.” —_Trade_: _James Russell Lowell._ The first glove-makers in Europe, we may suppose—certainly the first, skilled in that art, to work together in brotherhoods—were the monks of the early Middle Ages. In common with many other old-established handicrafts, the glove trade is deeply indebted to the Church. On this point, William S. Beck, the leading English authority on glove lore of thirty-five years ago, has summed up the conditions most interestingly and clearly. He says: “Muscular Christianity is no new doctrine. Faith and works were once literally united in a secular sense. Before corruptions crept in, and while monastic establishments maintained the simple lines on which they had been founded, their inmates were the most skillful and industrious of artisans. Weaving, illuminating, gardening, embroidery, woodwork—these and many other occupations were practiced sedulously by the holy friars. The original idea of the founders of these institutions was to bring together a company of Christians who were workers. Benedict enjoins his followers to fight valiantly against idleness, the canker of truth. “‘Therefore,’ he prescribes, ‘the brethren must be occupied in the labor of the hands, and again at certain times in divine study.’