Vaugelas, the grammarian, paid tribute to the power of Fashion, when he said: “Words are like fashions. The wise, who know that they must speak and dress like every one else, do not immediately adopt the newest inventions of folly, but only those in general use, and it is equally unreasonable to endeavour to make words or to make fashions, or to refuse to abide by them after they have been publicly recognized.” In other words, custom overrides everything as regards both language and dress, and no one can decree innovations either in speech or in costume, with a chance of being obeyed. Nor did the Jansenists meet with better success when they attempted to deprive a certain lady of Easter Communion because she had trimmed her pocket-handkerchief with lace. Was it not the fashion? Meanwhile the mere bourgeoises, who dared not openly defy the sumptuary laws, wore, in place of the lace forbidden them, a quantity of ribbon under the generic name of “galants.” Knots of ribbon appeared on the dresses of all the bourgeoises, and even on those of the maid-servants of Molière’s and Corneille’s time. There were tufts of ribbon on the skirts, bodices, sleeves, and hair. Bourgeoises felt the necessity of wearing ribbons at a time when cavaliers were profusely adorned with them. The whole French people were ribbon mad. The “chaperon” or hood was still worn by bourgeoises. This was a small coif pointed on the forehead, and with an appendage behind that hung over the shoulders. The point was fastened down by pins. If we may believe the author of “La Chasse au Vieil Grognard,” “nobody was so well dressed, so clean, and so respectable” as the bourgeoises. “So well mannered, and so agreeable in their speech and conversation, that for the most part they with their daughters would be taken for noble ladies rather than for bourgeoises and shopkeepers.” Great ladies also condescended to wear hoods, but only in winter. According to Ménage, Anne of Austria introduced the fashion of “garcettes,” which took the place of the padded wigs. The hair was frequently dressed “en tire-bouchons,” or corkscrew-fashion, and in loops, with a “culbute” or ribbon-bow fixed in the chignon. Widows were never seen without a little coif on their heads. After two years’ deep mourning in “guimpe” and mantle, says a modern writer, widows were restricted for the rest of their lives, unless they married again, to black and white made in the simplest manner. Mme. d’Aiguillon, the niece of Cardinal Richelieu, was the first who ventured to wear colours after her husband’s death. Yet she did not throw aside the hood, which remained in existence under different names—sometimes “languette,” sometimes “bandeau”—until the close of the seventeenth century. According to St. Simon, Mme. de Navailles, who died in 1700, was the last widow who wore a “bandeau.”