Here we have at once the expression of a scoffing sceptic, and a giddy philosopher, full of a particular charm. Do not believe, my gentle friend, that if I remain in your company so short a time in the beginning of the eighteenth century--the only one which has, you cannot deny it, all its perfumed quintessence--do not believe that I intend to linger in the Revolution, and conduct you to the house of Mademoiselle Lange, Madame Talien, Madame Récamier, and all the fashionable drawing-rooms of the First Republic, the Directory, the Consulate, and the Empire; to take ceremoniously the hand of the marvellous Beauties, the Nymphs, and Muses of those troubled times, in order the better to show you what extravagant Gloves, what prodigious Mittens, were then worn. The /Ladies' Journal/, and all the small journals of fashion, will surely teach you more about the Gloves worn by these worldly Calypsos and Eucharises than six hundred monotonous pages of varied descriptions. There is no Museum, however, preserving the objects of art which the Revolution marked deeply with its seal; and this fact will make me insist on a model of a special Glove, destined for a representative of the people despatched to the army, of which an erudite archæologist of the Revolution, and at the same time a remarkable humourist, Champfleury, has been good enough to communicate to me a design. This Glove of doe-skin, manufactured according to order, and broidered with arabesques about the slopings of the thumb, bears on the back of the hand a vignette in the form of a seal, which represents Liberty holding in her hand the pike, the Phrygian cap, and the scales of justice--a Liberty, you will say, by no means at liberty . . . . in her movements:--on the right is crouched a lion, the sign of force; on the left a cat, a sign of independence. I will not lose my time in paraphrasing for you this symbolic vignette; and, with a long historic stride, I will conduct you into the quietude of some chateau, under the Restoration, and, in the evening twilight, to the terrace before a great park. I will there show you two lovers warbling a serenade--the timid young girl touching a guitar, the young man deeply moved, putting a world of passion into his baritone voice. On the hands of the singer, behold, pearly grey gloves fastening with a single button; on the dainty little fingers supporting the guitar, examine those Mittens of black silk lace, open worked, like those which, according to tradition, are worn by the heroine of that charming comedy, the /Marriageable Maid/. There rises on my lips a song of the time which the /Almanac of the Muses/ has bequeathed us, to the air of /The Little Sailor/. It will perhaps add a spice of interest to my story. "Now, listen, my friend," as they used to say in the noble ages of chivalry. Title of the song: /The Gloves/.