Marie Antoinette carried the fashion of “panaches” or plumes to an extreme. If we may believe Soulavie’s memoirs of the period, “when Marie Antoinette passed through the gallery at Versailles, one could see nothing but a forest of waving plumes a foot and a half higher than the ladies’ heads.” The king’s aunts, who could not make up their minds to follow such extraordinary fashions, nor to copy the queen’s dress day by day, used to call her feathers “ornaments for the hair.” The majority of the court ladies, however, imitated the queen. Hats and caps were so overladen with feathers, that not only were coaches too small to contain the plumed dames of the period, but ladies were fain to bend their heads in the “entresols” of certain suites of rooms, because of the lowness of the ceilings. “Nevertheless,” says a lady of the court, “it was a fine sight to see that forest of plumes in the Versailles Gallery, waving with the least breath of air. It looked liked a moving garden of bright-coloured flowers, gently caressed by the zephyrs.” There was, however, a party in opposition. According to Mme. Campan, “mothers and husbands grumbled, and there was a general feeling that the queen would ruin all the French ladies.” But discontent and criticism were vain; Fashion as usual had her way, and feathers sometimes fetched as much as fifty louis (1250 francs) apiece. Generally speaking, the smallest caprices of Marie Antoinette were received as law by the ladies of the court. When, on the occasion of the birth of one of her children, her beautiful fair hair was cut off, and she consequently adopted a “coiffure basse,” the “coiffure à l’enfant,” or baby’s head-dressing, immediately became the rage. No one could be found to say a word against it, nor to hesitate at sacrificing her hair to the prevailing fashion. There were, nevertheless, many styles of dressing the hair: “au plaisir des dames” (the ladies’ pleasure), “à l’urgence” (the urgent), and “à la paresseuse” (the idle). At the same time various hats came into fashion, viz. the “artiste” (the artist), the “grandes prétentions,” (great pretensions), the “bandeau d’amour” (the bandeau of love), the “Carmelite,” the “lever de la reine” (Queen’s lever), the “novice de Cythère” (the Cytherean novice), and the “prêtresse de Vénus” (the priestess of Venus). The hat “à la révolte” was so called in allusion to the Flour warfare, or Grain disturbances, under Turgot. When Marie Antoinette took a fancy for playing at shepherdesses and a so-called rural life at Trianon, the great ladies of Versailles dressed their hair “à la laitière” (milkmaid) and “à la paysanne de la cour” (court peasant). The Parisians, on the contrary, wore successively hats “à la Suzanne” (from _Le Mariage de Figaro_), “à la Randon” (from _Bayard_, a play by Monvel), and “à la diadème,” or turban-shaped. In the early summer of 1775, the queen made her appearance in a gown of a kind of chestnut-brown, and the king said laughingly,—