This evil fashion, insisted on by dreadful Grand Chamberlains, was adopted by Paris managers, who hoped to attract by dresses--the very skirt of any one of which would swallow more than a _vicaire’s_ yearly income--and by a river of diamonds on a fair neck, whatever might be in the head above it. A young actress who hoped to live by such salary as her brains alone could bring her, and who would presume to wear sham jewellery or machine-made lace, was looked upon as a poor creature who would never have a reputation--that is, such a reputation as her gorgeously attired sisters, who did not particularly care to have _any_ but that for which the most of them dressed themselves. When the empire fell the above-named actresses thought that a certain republican simplicity might properly take the place of an imperial magnificence. Or they maintained that if stage-ladies were required to find stage-dresses that cost twenty times their salary, the cost of providing such dresses should fall on the stage-proprietors, and not on the stage-ladies. It is said that the bills Mdlle. Fargueil had to pay for her dresses in ‘La Famille Bénoiton’ and ‘Patrie’ represented a sum total which, carefully invested, would have brought her in a comfortable annuity! This may be a little exaggerated, but the value of the dresses may be judged of from one fact, namely, that the Ghent lace which Mdlle. Fargueil wore on her famous blue dress in ‘La Famille Bénoiton’ was worth very nearly 500_l._ How the attempt to introduce ‘moderation’ into the stage laws of costume has succeeded, the most of us have seen. It has not succeeded at all. Certain actresses are proud to occupy that bad preeminence from which they are able to set the fashion. ‘_Mon chancelier vous dira le reste!_’