Houses were thinly built and doors and windows rattled in their frames. The rooms in the greater part of France were heated only by open fires, although stoves of brick or glazed pottery were in common use in Switzerland and Germany; and wood was scarce and dear. In countries where the winter is short and sharp, people bear it with what patience they may, instead of providing against it, as is necessary where the cold is more severe and prolonged. Thicker clothes were worn in the house than when moving about in the streets. Wadded slippers protected the feet against the chill of the brick floors, and the old sat in high-backed chairs to cut off the draft, with footstools under their feet. Chilblains were, and are still, a constant annoyance of European winter. The dressing-gown was in fashion in France as in America, where we frequently see it in portraits of the last century. Similar garments had been in use in the Middle Ages. They belong to cold houses.[Footnote: Babeau, _Les Artisans_, 123. In 1695 the water and wine froze on the king's table at Versailles, _Les Bourgeois_, 23.] The dress of the working-classes, which had been very brilliant at the time of the Renaissance, had become sombre in the seventeenth century, but was regaining brilliancy in the eighteenth. The townspeople dressed in less bright colors than the peasants of the country, but not cheaply in proportion to their means. Already social distinctions were disappearing from costume, and it was remarked that a master-workman, of a Sunday, in his black coat and powdered hair, might be mistaken for a magistrate; while the wife of a rich burgher was hardly distinguishable from a noblewoman.[Footnote: Babeau, _Les Artisans_, 13, 199. Handiwork was very cheap. Babeau gives the bill for a black gown costing 210 livres 15 sous, of which only 3 livres was for the making; _Les Bourgeois_, 169 n.] Great thrift was practiced by the poorer townspeople of the middle class, but their lives were not without comfort. We read of a family in a small town of Auvergne before the middle of the century, composed of a man and his wife, with a large number of children, the wife's mother, her two grandmothers, her three aunts, and her sister, all sitting about one table, and living on one modest income. The husband and father had a small business and owned a garden and a little farm. In the garden almost enough vegetables were raised for the use of the family. Quinces, apples, and pears were preserved in honey for the winter. The wool of their own sheep was spun by the women, and so was the flax of their field, which the neighbors helped them to strip of an evening. From the walnuts of their trees they pressed oil for the table and for the lamp. The great chestnuts were boiled for food. The bread also was made of their own grain, and the wine of their own grapes.