From this time downwards appear occasional mention of partlets,[157] knit caul fashion, of Venice gold, and of white thread,[158] of billament lace of Venice, in silver and black silk.[159] It is not, however, till the reign of Elizabeth[160] that Italian cut-works and Venice lace came into general use. These points found their way into France about the same period, though we hear little of them. PLATE XII [Illustration: ITALIAN. POINT DE VENISE À RÉSEAU.--The upper ones are of yellow silk; a chalice veil, with dove and olive branch, and possibly an altar border. Probably late seventeenth century. The lower is thread, early eighteenth century. Width, 2 in. In private collections. Photos by A. Dryden.] _To face page 48._ {49}Of "point couppé" there is mention, and enough, in handkerchiefs for Madame Gabrielle, shirts for the king, and fraizes for La Reine Margot; but whether they be of Venice or worked in France, we are unenlightened. The works of Vinciolo[161] and others had already been widely circulated, and laces and point couppé now formed the favourite occupation of the ladies. Perhaps one of the earliest records of point de Venise will be found in a ridiculous historiette of Tallemant des Réaux, who, gossiping of a certain Madame de Puissieux,[162] writes: "On m'assuroit qu'elle mangeoit du point coupé. Alors les points de Gênes, de Raguse, ni d'Aurillac ni de Venise n'étoient point connus et on dit qu'au sermon elle mangea tout le derrière du collet d'un homme qui etoit assis devant elle." On what strange events hang the connecting threads of history! By 1626 foreign "dentelles et passements au fuseau" were declared contraband. France paying large sums of money to other countries for lace, the Government, by this ordinance, determined to remedy the evil. It was at this period that the points of Venice were in full use.[163] "To know the age and pedigrees Of points of Flanders and Venise"[164] would, in the latter case, have been more difficult, had it not been for the pattern-books so often quoted. The earliest points, as we already know, soon passed from the stiff formality of the "Gotico" into the flowing lines of the Renaissance, and into that fine patternless guipure which is, _par excellence_, called Point de Venise.[165] In the islands of the Lagune there still lingers a tale of the first origin of this most charming production. A sailor youth, bound for the Southern Seas, brought home to his betrothed a bunch of that pretty coralline (Fig. 20) known to the unlearned as the mermaid's lace.[166] The girl, a worker in points, struck by the graceful nature of the seaweed, with its small white knots united, as it were, by {50}a "bride," imitated it with her needle, and after several unsuccessful trials produced that delicate guipure which before long became the taste of all Europe. It would be difficult to enumerate the various kinds of lace produced by Venice in her palmy days.