According to circumstances, they had a _gande paole d'honneu_, or a _petite paole d'honneu_; but whichever of these two was used to support something either difficult or impossible to believe, the listener, too polite to contradict the person with whom he was conversing, contented himself with saying: "It is incoyable" (incredible), suppressing the _r_ in _incroyable_. Whereupon the other would say: "I give you my solemn grande (or, as they said, _gande_) word of honor." And then, of course, no doubt remained. Hence the designation _Incroyable_ changed to _Incoyable_, given to the _jeunesse dorée_. CHAPTER III THE MERVEILLEUSES The _incoyable_, that hybrid of the Revolution, had his feminine counterpart, like him born of the same epoch. She was called the meiveilleuse. She borrowed her raiment, not from a new fashion like the _incoyable_, but from antiquity, from the Greek and Corinthian draperies of the Phrynes and the Aspasias. Tunic, peplum, and mantle, all were cut after the fashion of antiquity. The less a woman had on to conceal her nakedness the more elegant she was. The true meiveilleuse, or merveilleuses--for that of course was the real word--had bare arms and legs, the tunic, modelled after that of Diana, was often separated at the side, with nothing more than a cameo to catch the two parts together above the knee. But this was not enough. The ladies took advantage of the warm weather to appear at balls and at the promenade with filmy garments more diaphanous than the clouds which enveloped Venus, when she led her son to Dido. Æneas did not recognize his mother until she emerged from the clouds. _Incessut patuit dea_, says Virgil, "by her step was the goddess known." These ladies, however, did not need to emerge from their clouds in order to be seen, for they were perfectly visible through them, and those who took them for goddesses must have done so only out of courtesy. This airy tissue of which Juvenal speaks became all the rage. Besides private parties they met at public balls. People gathered either at the Lycée-Bal or the Hôtel Thélusson to mingle their tears and their plans of vengeance with their dancing. These assemblies were called the "Balls of the Victims," and, indeed, no one was admitted to them unless he or she had had relatives either drowned by Carlier, guillotined by Robespierre, shot by Collot d'Herbois, or blown to pieces by Fréron. Horace Vernet, who designed costumes for a living, has left a charming portfolio of the costumes of that period drawn from life with that delightful wit with which Heaven had endowed him. Nothing could be more amusing than this grotesque collection, and it is difficult to imagine how an _incoyable_ and a _meiveilleuse_ could meet without laughing in each other's faces.