In like manner the fan offered opportunities for the Gallo-Roman ladies to display all their grace and skill, and the fan has retained its place down to our own time, while it has found an historian in M. Blondel, who has published a very curious monograph on fans among ancient and modern peoples. The Gauls of both sexes had a patriotic love of their national costume, which they would not discard even when travelling in Asia. Nevertheless, they did not refuse to learn from their Roman conquerors, whose advanced civilization took gradual hold of our ancestors, and ended by metamorphosing them. Did they borrow something from the costumes of the Vandals, Huns, Goths, and Burgundians, from the various barbarians who appeared in succession on the soil of Gaul? We may believe that they did, for the women who accompanied those wild invaders must have left everywhere behind them some trace of their passage. As they sat making their garments in their tents, they must have inspired the Gallo-Roman women with a wish to imitate this or that accessory of the toilet, so soon as the terror caused by the presence of the soldiery had passed away. And though some of these strangers wore only the skins of beasts, others were accustomed to “the purple,” and to tissues from the East; some few combined Greek elegance with Latin wealth, and were covered with valuable ornaments. The Visigoths mingled with the peoples of Southern Gaul, and the women were sufficiently civilized to be not unpleasing to the vanquished. At Toulouse, where the Gothic kings had fixed their abode, a large and splendid court, which was destined to exercise an undisputed sway during many centuries, had risen round them. The Burgundians, who had established themselves between the banks of the Lake of Geneva and the confluence of the Moselle and the Rhine, looked upon the Gallo-Romans not as subjects, but as brethren; nor did their laws forbid marriage between themselves and the inhabitants of a conquered country. They evidently followed more or less slowly the progress of civilization in Gaul, and their manners and customs and even their dress influenced and were influenced in their turn by those of the inhabitants of the occupied country. It may be that no history of the art of Dress will ever be verified by the documents necessary for the accurate reconstruction of the details of female costume from the first invasion of the barbarians until the last, that of the Franks, of which we are now about to note the most striking effects. Such lapses are to be regretted, but they could not be filled up without venturing on unfounded hypotheses or unsupported fancy. It is better to restrict ourselves to the exact truth than to change the pen of history for that of romance. [Illustration] [Illustration: GALLIC GALLO-ROMAN MEROVINGIAN CARLOVINGIAN] CHAPTER II. THE MEROVINGIAN PERIOD. 428 TO 752.