It is there we see the costliness of the _fermails_, or clasps of cloaks and copes, called also _pectoraux_, because they fastened the garments across the breast; girdles, chaplets (head-dresses), portable reliquaries, and other “little jewels (Fig. 99) _pendants et à pendre_,” the fashion of which we have restored under the name of _breloques_, and which represent every variety of object more or less whimsical. We see, for instance, gold clasps representing a peacock, a fleur-de-lis, two hands “clasped.” This one is embellished with six sapphires, sixty pearls, and other large gems; that one with eighteen rubies, and four emeralds. From a girdle of Charles V., which is made “of scarlet silk adorned with eight gold mountings,” are suspended “a knife, scissors, and a pen-knife,” ornamented in gold; the trinkets (pendants) represent “a man on horseback, a cock holding a mirror in the form of a trefoil,” or “a stag of pearls with enamelled horns;” or, again, a man mounted on a double-headed serpent, “playing on a Saracenic horn” (of Saracen origin). Finally, we remark that in reliquaries a fashion long established was maintained, which consisted of forming them of a statuette representing a saint (Fig. 100), or of a subject that comprised his image, and to which were attached, by a small chain, relics inlaid in a little tabernacle of gold or silver, preciously wrought. [Illustration: Fig. 99.--Scent-box in Chased Gold. (A French Work of the Fifteenth Century.)] But now the fifteenth century opens out, and with it a period of tumult. France suddenly beheld that impulse to industry paralyzed, which, to prosper, requires a condition of affairs very different from sanguinary civil dissensions and foreign invasion. Not only were the workshops closed, but princes and nobles were more than once constrained to appropriate the gorgeous decorations of their tables and their collections of gems, to pay and arm warriors under their command, or even to redeem themselves from captivity. At that time the goldsmith’s art flourished in the neighbouring country of Flanders, then quietly submissive to the powerful house of Burgundy, which, with equal taste and liberality, encouraged the art, which had installed itself in the principal cities. This was also an epoch of magnificent productions [Illustration: Fig. 100.--Reliquary, Silver-gilt, surmounted by a Statuette of the Virgin with the Infant Jesus, representing Jeanne d’Evreux, Queen of France. (Museum of Sovereigns, in the Louvre.)] in that country, but not more than one or two examples remain; these are attributed to Corneille de Bonte, who worked at Ghent, and was [Illustration: Fig. 101.--The Ensign of the Collar of the Goldsmiths of Ghent. (Fifteenth Century.)]