‘Paillette aux bonnets, Aux toquets, Aux petits corsets! Paillette Aux fins bandeaux, Aux grands chapeaux! Paillette Aux noirs colliers, Aux blancs souliers! Paillette Paillette aux rubans, Aux turbans, On ne voit rien sans Paillette.’ In the ‘Sans Gêne’ fan, with figure of an opera dancer, the dress of the lady is pink gauze. The material of the leaf (green silk) is cut away, leaving the dress semi-transparent in those parts which are not overlaid with spangles. During the Empire period and later, this system of the introduction of gauze or net was carried further, fans being treated with a broad border of net, and various applied decorations in gold, silver, and spangles, these being the precursors of the fans made entirely of gauze or net, decorated in a similar manner, and in vogue during the first quarter of the nineteenth century. [Illustration: Lorgnette Fans, ivory, in form of arrows, silvered, two circular horn, with palliettes, semicircular horn with paillettes. Mr L. C. R. Messel.] Lorgnette or opera-glass fans are evidence of a fashion that obtained during the seventeenth and again during the latter half of the eighteenth centuries. M. Blondel quotes from _Menagiana_ as follows:— ‘The fans _à jour_ carried by the women, when they go to Porte Saint-Bernard to take the air on the bank of the river, are called “lorgnettes.”’ A paper called _Nécessaire_, for 1759, refers to this means of satisfying pardonable curiosity without wounding modesty. A small opera- or spy-glass was set in the chief sticks of the fan, either at the top of the panache, probably the earliest form, or at the rivet. In the former case the whole of the blades were perforated, the fan when opened showing a series of circular perforations round its upper border. The advantage of such an arrangement will be obvious; a fair reveller might see without being seen, and the tell-tale blush be hid. For more distant objects the opera-glass was called into requisition, the fan used either open or closed. ‘Pour cacher la pudeur d’usage Contre un beau front le papier sert Et les brins forment un passage Par où l’œil voyage à couvert.’[115] The material was either ivory, horn, or occasionally, in the case of the semicircular folding-fans, gauze, decorated with spangles or embroidered work. The brisés were made to the semicircular shape, and also to that of the full circle or cockade. In the latter instance the long handle was provided with circular loops, by which the fan might be held in the same manner as a pair of scissors. The blades assume various shapes, as that of Love’s arrow, the bat’s wing, an umbrella, a snake, a violin, and, when made of horn, were usually decorated with ‘piqué.’