[Illustration: HUNGARIAN. BOBBIN LACE.--Latter half of nineteenth century. Widths, 6¼ and 2½ in. Victoria and Albert Museum.] PLATE LXXI. [Illustration: AUSTRO-HUNGARIAN, SOUTH SLAVONIAN. CUFF OF LINEN EMBROIDERED IN SATIN STITCH IN WHITE SILK. WHITE SILK BOBBIN LACE.--Eighteenth century. Width, 7½ in. Victoria and Albert Museum.] _To face page 268._ {269}SWITZERLAND. "Dans un vallon fort bien nommé Travers, S'élève un mont, vrai séjour des hivers."--_Voltaire._ In the Preface of the _Neues Modelbuch of Froschowern_, printed at Zurich (see APPENDIX), occurs the following:--"Amongst the different arts we must not forget one which has been followed in our country for twenty-five years. Lace-making was introduced in 1536 by merchants from Italy and Venice. Many women, seeing a means of livelihood in such work, quickly learned it, and reproduced lace with great skill. They first copied old patterns, but soon were enabled to invent new ones of great beauty. The industry spread itself about the country, and was carried to great perfection: it was found to be one specially suitable for women, and brought in good profits. In the beginning these laces were used solely for trimming chemises and shirts; soon afterwards collars, trimmings for cuffs, caps, and fronts and bodies of dresses, for napkins, sheets, pillow-cases and coverlets, etc., were made in lace. Very soon such work was in great demand, and became an article of great luxury. Gold thread was subsequently introduced into some of it, and raised its value considerably; but this latter sort was attended with the inconvenience that it was more difficult to clean and wash than laces made with flax threads only."[724] The above account is interesting, not only in its reference to Switzerland, but from its corroborative evidence of the Italian origin of lace. In 1572, one Symphorien Thelusson, a merchant of Lyons, having escaped from the massacre of St. Bartholomew, concealed himself in a bale of goods, in which he reached Geneva, and was hospitably received by the inhabitants. When, after the lapse of near a hundred and twenty years, crowds of French emigrants arrived in the city, driven from their homes on the Revocation of the Edict of Nantes, a descendant of this same Thelusson took a body of 2,000 refugees into his service, and at once established a manufacture of lace.[725] The produce of this industry was smuggled {270}back into France, the goods conveyed across the Jura over passes known only to the bearers, by which they avoided the custom-house duties of Valence. "Every day," writes Jambonneau, himself a manufacturer, "they tell my wife what lace they want, and she takes their orders." Louis XIV. was furious.[726]