Two ells of scarlet cloth cost eight gold crowns; the lining, two crowns
more. One ell of green stuff, two crowns. For making a robe and _huque_,
with trimming of white satin, sendal, and other stuff, one crown. Total,
thirteen gold crowns, equal to about twenty dollars of our money. Not an
extravagant present, you say, in return for a royal city. But Joan had
looked for no reward, and Charles gave what he could. Be sure that the
Maid was well pleased with her costume of state; I cannot repeat too
often that she was seventeen, and fair as a white rose. She may even
have worn it--who knows? during those few days of rest, after Patay, at
Père Boucher's. She loved pretty clothes. One can fancy the astonishment
of Alençon, coming clanking in his armor to take counsel with his
fellow-commander, to find her blushing rose-like in scarlet and green.
It is a pretty picture. Those were the days of the hennin, but I cannot
think that the Maid ever, even for a moment, crowned her short dark
locks with that most hideous invention of fashion. We all know it in
pictures; the single or double-horned headdress (I know not which is
uglier!) often reaching monstrous proportions, with which the
fashionable women of that day were infatuated. The single hennin was
often two or three feet in height; the double one perhaps nearly as
wide.
In the first year of the siege of Orleans one Friar Thomas preached a
crusade against the extravagance of women's dress, and especially
against the hennin. "He was so vehement against them," says Monstrelêt,
"that no woman thus dressed dared to appear in his presence, for he was
accustomed when he saw any with such dresses, to excite the little boys
to torment and plague them. He ordered the boys to shout after them,
'_Au hennin! au hennin!_' even when the ladies were departed from him,
and from hearing his invectives; and the boys pursuing them endeavored
to pull down these monstrous head-dresses, so that the ladies were
forced to seek shelter in places of safety. These cries caused many
tumults between those who raised them and the servants of the ladies.
For a time the ladies were ashamed, and came to mass in close caps,
'such as those of nuns.' But this reform lasted not, for like as snails,
when anyone passes them, draw in their horns, and when all danger seems
over, put them forth again--so these ladies, shortly after the preacher
had quitted their country, forgetful of his doctrine and abuse, began to
resume their former colossal head-dresses, and wore them even higher
than before."
A terrible fellow, this Friar Thomas. Monstrelêt further tells us that
"at sermons he divided women from men by a cord, having observed some
sly doings between them while he was preaching."
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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