That great man almost seems to have written expressly in order to give us these details of Parisian dress. He omits nothing, neither shape, nor price, nor colour. He instructs us as to the fashions of each season; he mentions fans, and “éventoirs” in feathers. We observe, however, that there is no mention of autumn fashions in his interesting description. We must infer, therefore, that the fall of the year was included half in the summer and half in the winter season, and that the ladies of the sixteenth century were as yet unacquainted with that refinement of fashion at the present day, the autumn costume. Umbrellas, which at first were ill-made, did not “take” in France. They were considered inconvenient things. “There is no season more inimical,” says Montaigne, “than the burning heat of a hot sun, for the umbrellas that have been used in Italy from the time of the ancient Romans, fatigue the arm more than they relieve the head.” Head-gear varied with the seasons. In winter it was worn according to the French, in spring to the Spanish, in summer to the Turkish fashion; except on Sundays and festivals, when women covered their heads in the French style, as being more honourable and more suggestive of “matronly chastity.” On those occasions they generally wore a velvet hood with hanging curtain. The cap of the women of Lorraine consisted of a piece of stuff wound about the head in cylinder shape; that of the Basque women resembled a horn of plenty upside down, it was made of white lawn trimmed with ribbon; and that of the Bayonne women was a “guimpe” arranged like a turban, with a little peak or horn in the front. The greatest innovation in feminine costume was the appearance of the vertugadin, or hoop, in 1530. Dresses were stretched over wide, stiff petticoats mounted on hoops of iron, wood, or whalebone. A band of coarse linen, supported by wire, lifted them up round the waist. It is said that Louise de Montaynard, the wife of François de Tressan, contrived, by the aid of her hoop, to save the life of her cousin, the brave Duc de Montmorency. The duke was hard beset by a great number of the enemy in the town of Béziers. Louise bade him hide under her huge bell-shaped hoop, and thus saved him from the vengeance that threatened him. The fashion of wearing three gowns, one over the other, shows the prejudices of the time with respect to distinctions in dress:— “Pour une cotte qu’a la femme du bourgeois, La dame en a sur soy l’une sur l’autre trois, Que toutes elle faict également paroistre, Et par là se faict plus que bourgeoise cognoistre.”[16]