La belle Ferronière invented the head-dress which bore her name. A skull-cap of velvet or satin, splendidly embroidered, was set amidst curls that only reached to the shoulders. A narrow ribbon, or chain, in the centre of which was fixed a jewel or _ferronière_, passed across the brow and was fastened in a large knot at the back of the head. Another style of head-dress formed the hair into bands half concealed by lappets falling over the cheeks and a veil; the folds at one end were gathered together into a golden tulip terminating in a cluster of precious stones. The art of the goldsmith was thus combined with that of the hair-dresser, and the most celebrated beauties adorned themselves in every conceivable way. They must have dreaded, especially after nightfall, the numerous thieves abounding in the capital. Fancy going on foot so dazzlingly arrayed! It is well to bear in mind that in the time of Francis I. there were but three coaches in all Paris: one belonged to Queen Claude of France, a daughter of Louis XII.; another to Diane de Poictiers, who at the age of thirty-two had lost her husband, Louis de Brézé, Count de Maulevrier, High Seneschal of Normandy, and who always wore the widow’s garb even in the days of her greatest prosperity; and the third to a gentleman named Réné de Laval, who could not mount on horseback on account of his enormous size. Our ancestors had nothing to fear from blocks of carriages, nor from the mud by which we are often splashed in crowded streets. At the end of the fifteenth century, Gilles le Maître, High President of the Paris Parliament, executed a contract with his farmers, by which the latter were bound “on the eves of the four great festivals of the year, and at the time of the vintage, to provide him with a covered cart, with good clean straw inside, in which his wife, Marie Sapin, and his daughter, Geneviève, could be comfortably seated, and also to bring a foal and a she-ass, on which their serving-women should ride, while he himself should go first, mounted on his mule, and accompanied by his dog, who would follow him on foot.” Truly a humble conveyance for the wife of a High President, who himself rode modestly on a mule! If we examine the prints of the time of Henri IV., we shall be at a loss to conceive how such very smart personages could pass through the streets on foot, and with Brantôme, we shall begin to admire Marguerite de Valois’s litters, as represented by the artists of that period, “heavily gilt, and splendidly covered and painted with many fine devices, and her coaches and carriages the same.” The succeeding century witnessed great changes. The wife of the High President, Christophe de Thou, was the first Frenchwoman, not a princess, to whom permission to possess a carriage was granted. The bourgeoises long envied her that delightful privilege!