“Dresses painted with figures and flowers are still worn, but there is more green in the bouquets of flowers. They are beginning to paint the finest linen, and this is quite a novelty, for all those we have seen hitherto were only printed. “Jet and enamel buttons are mentioned, watered ribbons, and square watches with looking-glass at the back; but this last fashion does not meet with approval, as it is thought the corners of the watch might be dangerous. “Net-work coifs were at first dotted, and afterwards open worked; this last is quite a novelty, as are also the skirts of ‘point d’Angleterre,’ printed on linen and mounted on silk with raised ornaments; every woman has bought some.” Jewellery had a large sale: some in coloured glass, manufactured by a clever artisan in the Temple, was called “Temple jewellery.” Fashion now became a question of etiquette, and Louis XIV. was lawgiver. The court obeyed every fancy of the sovereign, and the town followed suit, as far as was possible, and more than was reasonable. Debts were incurred for dress. A tailor made a claim of 300,000 francs on the great Condé! Men and women alike endeavoured to shine in dress. “At the royal residences,” says Voltaire, “every lady found a complete suit of clothes in readiness for her. A princess had but to appear in some striking costume, and every lady of rank immediately endeavoured to imitate, even to outshine her. The most extravagant sums were paid for dresses that were continually renewed.” “Scarcely had one fashion usurped the place of another,” says La Bruyère, “when it was succeeded by a third, which in its turn was replaced by some still newer fashion, not by any means the last.” Never had the refinements of Fashion been pushed so far. The poverty of a great part of the population in the time of the Fronde has been admitted. But Dubosc-Montandré, the author of a pamphlet called “Le Tombeau du Sens Commun,” is of a different opinion, and exclaims in 1650: “If the people were poor, should we see neckerchiefs worth twenty or thirty crowns on the wives of cooks? or liveried lacqueys carrying a cushion behind their mistress, a mere shopkeeper’s wife? Should we see milliners and butchers’ daughters wearing dresses worth 300 or 400 francs? or gold trimmings brought down so low as to adorn laundresses withal? And is it not true that clothes ought to be infallible tokens by which to distinguish rank and conditions in life, and that in the gardens of the Luxembourg or the Tuileries we ought to have no difficulty in distinguishing a duchess from a bookseller’s spouse, a marchioness from a grocer’s wife, or a countess from a cook?” Our author forgets that extravagance does not always indicate general wealth, though it frequently casts suspicion on the moral tone of society.