A comparative simplicity became fashionable, and ladies laid aside their grandest attire. The new style of dress suited the “rouéries” of the Regent, and the fêtes given by Mme. de Tencin and other fine ladies who threw open their drawing-rooms to the devotees of Fashion, and it was appropriate to the perfumed boudoirs of the time. Towards the middle of the eighteenth century we remark the prevalence of the loose gowns depicted by Watteau in his exquisite pictures. They are free, flowing, and open, something like dominoes. His lovely “marquises” wear flower-embroidered slippers without heels, and with the points turned up. Gowns were worn so low on the shoulders, and bosom, as to be indecent. Next come the excesses of a “loud” style of dress, hoops that are still more extravagant than the vertugadins of old time, and the falbala. Great ladies must dazzle, they must show the common folk that they possess quarterings of nobility. They must prove that they made millions in the Rue Quincampoix. Dust must be thrown in the eyes of the world, a kind of consideration must be obtained by display, if not merited by worth, talent, and ability. One sort of “dust” was hair-powder, which may serve as a type of the pretences of its time. Luxury attained fabulous proportions. Four thousand jays were sacrificed for the trimming of one dress; Mme. de Mategnon settled a life-annuity of 600 francs on her dressmaker, in payment for one gown. The Duchesse de Choiseul’s dress surpassed anything that had ever been seen. “It was of blue satin,” says Horace Walpole, “trimmed with marten fur, covered with gold, and sprinkled with diamonds. Each diamond shone from the centre of a silver star, set in a gold spangle.” Many families might have lived in comfort on the cost of that costume. But who thinks of the poor? Is there not the “hospital” to receive them? All this display and luxury indicated the degeneracy of the time, and certain philosophers rebuked the fine ladies, at the risk of being set down as ill-tempered pedants, birds of ill-omen, and prophets of evil. But the “petits marquis,” or fine gentlemen, entered the lists in defence of the “petites marquises,” or fine ladies, who laughed at rebukes and philosophy alike. A reaction, the inevitable consequence of long-continued excess, set in at the end of the eighteenth century. Farthingales vanished, and scarcely a trace of powder could be discerned on the hair, which was no longer perfumed. The most elegant among Parisian women did not hesitate to wear flat shoes, as a protest against high heels. Both men and women clothed themselves “à la Jean-Jacques-Rousseau.” They openly renounced affectation, and sought from Nature her perennial adornments, and her matchless charms.