really generous mood would present a cashmere shawl, an expensive and much appreciated luxury. The manipulation of shawls on frail, rounded little persons, who, in England at least, still fainted at will and indulged in the vapours, was a matter of some art. Balzac, in one of his short stories, asserts that a _femme du monde_ could be distinguished from the actress or the _grisette_ by the handling of her _cachemire_ alone. There was only one great change in woman's dress between the earlier and later days of Bohemia, and that was in the sleeves, which dwindled suddenly as if the balloons had been pricked, and became either closely fitting or almost disappeared into two little frilly bands. In fact, during the forties, before skirts began to be exaggerated on horse-hair paddings and verge upon the crinoline, female costume was as nearly natural as it can be if corsets be granted. Nothing can be more charming than the appearance of the Queen of the Belgians in her portrait by Winterhalter which hangs in the gallery at Versailles. She wears a red velvet dress, cut simply as to the _corsage_, with the skirt reaching the ground in full, stately folds: there is no extravagance of bows and frills, only a little lace at the bosom and sleeves. So, if we would picture Mimi or Musette, as they were dressed for that memorable day at Fontenay-aux-Roses, in the new muslin frocks made by their own hands, we must imagine dainty little women, looking as if a breath would blow them away, their pretty cheeks showing between two bewitching clusters of ringlets, straw bonnets with not too large brims upon their heads, tied with a coquettish ribbon, gowns of flowered muslin, light, simple, and flowing, and scarfs pinned round their sloping shoulders or held in place by mittened hands. Gavarin drew them to the life time and time again, and they were considerably more attractive than any would-be _Bohémiennes_ of our time in their rough, untidy tweeds or amorphous "rational" dress.