coats off their backs, and turn them out. “And you,” says Gorgibus, chasing the _précieuses_ from the room, to repent at leisure of their affectations and thirst for _la galantérie_, “out of my sight, and to the devil with all these verses, romances, sonnets, and the rest of it—pernicious amusements of do-nothings and idlers!” So the curtain descended on the _Précieuses Ridicules_, and the story goes that before very long the play extinguished the glory of the salon of the Hôtel de Rambouillet. The Comte de Fiesque, who had gone with Condé to Spain, was killed in Catalonia by the bursting of a bomb. Ninon, not able personally to ask the widow where the child was which de Fiesque regarded as his, commissioned two persons to ascertain for her from Madame de Fiesque some intelligence concerning its whereabouts, but the countess asserted that she had no knowledge of this. The remorse and regret of Ninon were of no avail: she was unable to trace the lost one. At last, after long negotiations, Maria Théresa of Austria was united to Louis XIV. This brought Condé back to allegiance to France, by the Peace of the Pyrenees, effected by Cardinal Mazarin, one of the few of his achievements which really benefited France. Ninon was one in the gorgeous cortège which proceeded to Grosbois, beyond Charenton, to receive the young princess. It was a brilliant show. The fashions of the early days of the young king had greatly changed since his father’s time, which was so greatly distinguished, at least as far as male attire went, for its elegant simplicity. Bright hues had superseded the black, the beautiful but sombre colouring of the material of the silk or satin or velvet doublets with large, loose slashed sleeves; the falling bands of rich point lace; the long, straight, fringed or pointed breeches meeting down to the lace-ruffled or lawn wide-topped boots, and the eminently graceful Flemish plumed beaver hat. In place of the long hair waving to the neck, full-bottomed periwigs had come into vogue; the doublets were short and waistcoatless, displaying a bulging shirt-front, tied with ribbons to the nether garments, which, like the large loose sleeves, were covered with points and bows; deep lace ruffles drooped from the knees, and only the falling collar, with a hat higher crowned than of yore, but still plumed, remained of the old style. It was to the beauty of Louis XIV.’s hair when he was a little boy, that the huge, hideous periwigs seem to owe their invention. Nature’s ruling has its exceptions in the bestowal of naturally curling head-covering, and desiring to offer the sincerest flattery of imitation, the French courtiers and the ingenuity of the coiffeurs combined to invent the huge periwigs, which in some sort of fashion even contrived to live through the French Revolution and the Terror itself; for did not Robespierre preside at the great Feast of the Supreme Being in about the ugliest, primmest bobtail wig ever fashioned on barber’s block?