[Illustration: FLEMISH. GUIPURE DE FLANDRE, BOBBIN-MADE.--Seventeenth century. In the Musée Cinquantenaire, Brussels.] _To face page 134._ {135}The first Binche lace has the character of Flanders lace, so it has been supposed that the women who travelled from Ghent in the train of Mary of Burgundy, the daughter of Charles le Téméraire, created the taste for lace at Binche, and that the stay of the great ladies, on their visits to the royal lady of the manor, made the fortune of the lace-makers. Afterwards there was much traffic between the lace-workers of Brussels and Binche, and there is a great resemblance between the laces of the two towns. Sometimes the latter is less light, richer, and more complex in effect, and the design is closely sprinkled with open-work, the ground varied and contrasted. Binche was, as early as 1686, the subject of a royal edict, leading one to infer that the laces it produced were of some importance. In the said edict, the roads of Verviers, Gueuse, and Le Catelet, to those persons coming from Binche, are pronounced "faux passages."[381] Savary esteems the products of this little village. The same laces, he adds, are made in all the _monastères_ of the province, that are partly maintained by the gains. The lace is good, equal to that of Brabant and Flanders. The characteristic peculiarities of Binche are, that there is either no cordonnet at all outlining the pattern, or that the cordonnet is scarcely a thicker thread than that which makes the _toilé_.[382] The design itself is very indefinite, and is practically the same as the early Valenciennes laces. Varieties of the _fond de neige_ ground were used instead of the regular _réseau_ ground. Dentelle de Binche appears to have been much in vogue in the last century. It is mentioned in the inventory of the Duchesse de Modène,[383] daughter of the Regent, 1761; and in that of Mademoiselle de Charollais, 1758, who has a "couvrepied, mantelet, garniture de robe, jupon," etc., all of the same lace. In the _Misérables_ of Victor Hugo, the old grandfather routs out {136}from a cupboard "une ancienne garniture de guipure de Binche" for Cosette's wedding-dress.[384] The Binche application flowers have already been noticed. The lace industry of Binche will soon be only a memory. But before 1830 it "was a hive of lace-makers, and the bees of this hive earned so much money by making lace that their husbands could go and take a walk without a care for the morrow," as it is curiously phrased in an account of Binche and its lace. (Plate XLIII.) We have now named the great localities for lace-making throughout the Low Countries. Some few yet remain unmentioned.