In the most varied literary works of the seventeenth century, memoirs, romances, varieties, dissertations, poems, enigmas, carols, and songs, there is not a word of allusion to the Parasol, there is an entire penury of anecdote, nothing whatever on the subject. It is useless to torture your understanding, to look through a miserable needle's eye, at the /Letters/ of Madame de Sévigné, the gossip of Tallemant, the /Conversations/ of Mademoiselle de Scudéry, the /Anecdotes/ of Ménage, the poetical collections, the different /Chats/, the /Medleys/--it is but a library overturned to no purpose, a headache gained without the slightest profit. In a MS. collection, written about 1676, which relates the memoirs of Nicolas Barillon, a comedian, this phrase alone attracts our attention: "The days being very hot, the lady carried either a mask or a Parasol of the most precious leather." From this mask or Parasol of precious leather no conclusion can be drawn better than that of the Dictionaries of the Anti-Academician, Antoine Furetière, or of the learned Richelet, where we find a résumé of the ideas of the time. Here, then, is the definition of the first:-- /Parasol/, s. m., a small portable piece of furniture, or round covering, carried in the hand, to defend the head from the great heats of the sun; it is made of a circle of leather, of taffety, of oilcloth, &c. It is suspended to the end of a stick; it is folded or extended by means of some ribs of whalebone which sustain it. It serves also to defend one from the rain, and then it is called by some /parapluie/ (umbrella). The definition of Richelet is almost the same. He adds, however, these words: "Only women carry Parasols, and they only in spring, summer, and autumn." Richelet, it is true, borders upon the eighteenth century, since he died but a little before the end of the reign of Louis the Great. This brings us to the aurora of the Regency, and a renaissance then occurs in feminine coquetry. We are now about to find our Sunshade in gallant parties, supported by little turbaned negroes; already we see it decorated with fringes of gold and trimmings of silk, enhanced with plumes of feathers, mounted on Indian bamboos, covered with changing silks, embellished in a thousand and one ways, worthy, in a word, of casting a discreet shade on those rosy and delicate faces which Pater, Vanloo, Lancret, La Rosalba, and Latour did their best to reproduce in luminous paintings or fresh pastels, those enchanting pictures where the coquetry of the past smiles still.