Since brocades were forbidden, they sent to Milan for gowns which, without a thread of gold or silver in them, cost, generally speaking, 500 crowns each; and the Italian manufacturers gained by all that our own lost. Five hundred crowns for the material of a dress! This was a round sum. Five hundred more were spent by French ladies on adjuncts and ornaments, on fringes, braidings, twists, and “cannetilles;” and they were delighted with the splendour they had attained without the help of either gold or silver. Their love for the beautiful was satisfied; the Milan gowns were quite equal to brocade! What right had Henri de Valois, asked the belles of the period, what right had he who “starched his wife’s collars and curled her hair,” according to malicious reports, to show such severity concerning other women’s dress? Did not he himself wear a velvet hat, with a plume and an aigrette of diamonds? Surely this head-dress had not a martial air? Had he not an invincible propensity for effeminacy in everything? Had he not deeply studied the contents of the queen’s wardrobe? and was he not more learned than all her women on every matter of feminine attire? And worse than this! Immediately on his return from Poland he eagerly adopted the fashion of paint and violet powder, that women had initiated at the end of the reign of Charles IX. A sort of rivalry sprang up under his auspices between the great nobles, who made him their model, and the ladies of the court. Not satisfied with his plumed cap, identical with the feminine coif or “escoffion,” he was perfumed with amber from head to foot. Never had such a thing been known in France. The Italians at the court of Catherine de Médicis had introduced a refined taste in perfumes. Nicolas de Montau, in his “Miroir des François,” reproved ladies for “making use of every perfume—cordial, civet, musk, ambergris, and other precious aromatic substances—for perfuming their dresses and linen, nay, their whole bodies.” The fashion spread, even among the bourgeois class. Everything was perfumed, garments, hair, gloves, and shoes; cavities were contrived in rings, bracelets, and necklaces to contain scent. Fans, which were used by young dandies in ruffs and ringlets, as well as by ladies, exhaled an unmistakable odour as they were gently fluttered in the breeze. The sexes vied with each other in the use of perfumes. Every lady at the court wore silk knitted gloves and scented gloves; and it has been asserted that the good Jeanne d’Albret, mother of Henri IV., was poisoned by gloves sent from Italy.