[152] The original has _de mise_, which was also used by Voltaire and Rousseau, but seems now to have become antiquated. [153] _Montre la corde_ in the original. [154] When the “Characters” first made their appearance in 1689, Louis XIV. no longer resided in the Louvre, but at Versailles. The greatest nobles, in order to pay their court to the king, lodged in some wretched rooms in the palace. [155] The first part of this paragraph, referring to “false greatness,” is said to apply to the Marshal de Villeroy; the second, alluding to “true greatness,” to Marshal Turenne (1611-1675). [156] An allusion to a fashion of the time La Bruyère wrote, when the ladies wore shoes with very high heels and enormous head-dresses, called _Fontanges_; the latter were invented by Marie-Angélique Scoraille de Roussille, Duchesse de Fontanges (1661-1681), who was one of the mistresses of Louis XIV. Our author refers to them in his chapter “Of Fashion,” § 12. [157] Some of the ladies at court, in order to hide the hollowness of their cheeks, used, it is said, to hold small balls of wax in their mouths. [158] Lise is generally supposed to have been Catherine-Henriette dʼAngennes de la Loupe, Countess dʼOlonne, one of the most dissolute ladies of the court of Louis XIV., who was fifty-five years old when this paragraph appeared (1692), and died in 1714. Many particulars about her are related in Bussy-Rabutinʼs _Histoire amoureuse des Gaules_. [159] This is said to allude to a certain Mademoiselle de Loines, who fell in love with a crooked, ill-looking, dwarfish limb of the law. [160] The memoirs of the time of Louis XIV. teem with examples of young men of the highest families who considered it no disgrace to live at the expense of rich and amorous old crones, and even to receive money from young ladies. [161] The original has _dans une ruelle_. _Ruelle_ means literally “a small street,” hence the narrow opening between the wall and the bed, on which bed superfine ladies, gaily dressed, were lying when they received their friends, and thus _ruelle_ came to mean “any fashionable assembly.” In Dr. Ashʼs “Dictionary of the English Language,” London, 1755, _ruelle_ is still defined “a little street, a circle, an assembly at a private house.” [162] _En cravate et en habit gris_, says the French, which was the usual dress of dandified magistrates, although they were strictly forbidden to wear any other clothes but black ones. [163] Only officers of the kingʼs household were allowed to wear gold-embroidered scarfs. [164] This alludes to the Count dʼAubigné, a brother of Madame de Maintenon, who was no favourite at court. See also the portrait of “Theodectes” in the chapter “Of Society and Conversation,” § 12, page 106. [165] The “lady” is said to have been Madame de la Ferrière, the wife of a _maître des requêtes_, and Dorinna a certain Mdlle. Foucault, a relative of some well-known _conseiller au parlement_, who was in love with a Doctor Moreau.