The most singular of all law cases between French actresses and managers was one the names of the parties to which have slipped out of my memory. It arose out of the refusal of a young actress, who had not lost her womanly modesty, to ‘go on’ in the dress provided for her, which would hardly have afforded her more covering than a postage-stamp. In the lawsuit which followed this act of insubordination, the modest young lady was defeated, and was rebuked by the magistrate for infringing the laws of the stage, of which the manager was the irresponsible legislator! The actress preferred the cancelling of her engagement to the degradation of such nightly exposure as was demanded by the manager and was sanctioned by the magistrate. I have said above that the eccentric extravagance of dress--the other extreme from next to none at all--was not a consequence of an example set by the empress. But there is something to be said on both sides. Only two years ago Mdlles. Fargueil, Bernhardt, and Desclées made public protest against the _pièces aux robes_, in which they were required to dress like empresses (of fashion) at their own expense. They traced the ruinous custom to the period when the Imperial Court was at Compiègne, and when the actresses engaged or ‘invited’ to play to the august company there were required by the inexorable rule of the Court to obey the sumptuary laws which regulated costume. Every lady was invited for three days; each day she was to wear three different dresses, and no dress was to be worn a second time. Count Bacciochi, the grand chamberlain, kept a sharp eye on the ladies of the drama. Histrionic queens and countesses were bound to be attired as genuinely as the historical dignitaries themselves. The story might be romance, the outward and visible signs were to be all reality. The awful Grand Chamberlain once banished an actress from the Court stage at Compiègne for the crime of wearing mock pearls when she was playing the part of a duchess!