Like all objects of adornment in the hands of women, the Sunshade in the last century became, like the Fan, almost a light and graceful plaything, serving to punctuate an expression, to round a gesture, to arm an attitude of charming reverie, in which, guided by pretty indolent fingers, its point traces vague designs upon the sand. Before the burning breath of amorous declarations, often the frail Sunshade escapes from the hands of a beauty, in sign of armistice, and as an avowal of abandonment. Be it open, and daintily held over powdered hair, or shut, and brushing the brocaded petticoat, it is always the "balancing pole of the Graces." It gives a value to listlessness on the rustic seat of the parks, under the vaulted roofs of grottoes, and it adds a piquancy to the frowardness of the feminine chatterers, who defend themselves by making fun of libertine attacks. In a word, in the light amorous allegories of the century, it is worthy to appear in those love-duets of /Leanders/ and /Isabellas/, which Watteau often composed with so rare an art of refinement. From the middle of the last century the Umbrella of taffety became the fashion at Paris. Caraccioli, in his /Picturesque and Sententious Dictionary/, gives us evidence of this: "It has long been the custom," he says, "not to go out save with one's Umbrella, and to trouble oneself by carrying it under one's arm. Those who wish not to be confounded with the vulgar, prefer to run the risk of getting wet to being regarded as people who walk on foot, for the Umbrella is the sign of having no carriage." The Parasols were made by the purse-makers, and when, by an edict of August 1776, the manufacturers of gloves, purses, and girdles were united in one community, an article thus conceived may be read in their statutes: "They alone also still have the right to make and manufacture all sorts of Umbrellas and Parasols, in whalebone and in copper, folding and non-folding, to garnish them atop with stuffs of silk and linen, to make Umbrellas of oilcloth, and Parasols adorned and ornamented in all sorts of fashions." According to the /Journal of a Citizen/, published at the Hague in 1754, the price of folding Parasols was then from 15 to 22 livres a piece, and the Parasol for the country from 9 to 14 livres. We must, however, believe that the common folk of Paris did not yet dare to purchase Parasols, since Bachaumont, in the /Secret Memoirs/, dated 6th September 1769, records the following enterprise:--