Some of the customs of this time will seem to us quite primitive. It was an unheard-of thing, for example, to see carriages going about the streets, as they had not yet come into general use, and riding on horseback was the ordinary means of locomotion, even for ladies. Indeed, mention has been found in one of the early historians of an adventure which befell Louisa Strozzi, a daughter of the great Florentine house of Strozzi, as she was returning to her home, from a ball in the early morning hours, _on horseback_. It seems to have been the custom then, as now, to give balls which lasted far into the night, and the growing wealth of the citizens caused an increasing love of display. In some communities laws were enacted in the interests of simplicity, and it was provided that not more than three dishes should be supplied for an ordinary entertainment, while twenty was the largest number which might be served at a wedding feast. With regard to matters of dress, Scipio Ammirato tells us in his sixteenth-century _History of Florence_ that in the earliest times the women had the simplest tastes and were "much more soft and delicate than the men," and he adds that "the greatest ornament of the most noble and wealthy woman of Florence was no other than a tight-fitting skirt of bright scarlet, without other girdle than a belt of antique style, and a mantle lined with black and white." Such simplicity, however, cannot have been long in vogue, for as early as 1323 the chronicler Villani informs us that the city authorities began to enact stringent sumptuary laws which were directed against the women. Three years after this, we learn from the same source that the Duke of Milan had made complaint because the women of Florence had induced his wife to wear, "in front of her face," a most unsightly knot of yellow and white silk, in place of her own curls, a style of head-dress already condemned by the city fathers of Florence. After this incident, the historian adds, by way of sententious remark: "Thus did the excessive appetite of the women defeat the reason and sense of the men." These laws of the year 1323 failed to prove effective, and finally, in 1330, more explicit measures were taken to check this growing evil. Villani had now best tell the story in his own words: