ave a very high price and value to those products.
Then, as now, high prices led to consumption; for vanity likes to
override obstacles. In France, as in other kingdoms, not only did royal
ordinances restrict the use of furs to the nobility (proved by the part
which ermine plays in the old blazons), but also certain rare furs, such
as _vair_ (which was undoubtedly Siberian sable), could not be worn by
any but kings, dukes, and certain lords clothed with official powers.
A distinction was made between the greater and lesser _vair_. The very
name has been so long disused, that in a vast number of editions of
Perrault's famous tale, Cinderella's slipper, which was no doubt of
_vair_ (the fur), is said to have been made of _verre_ (glass). Lately
one of our most distinguished poets was obliged to establish the
true orthography of the word for the instruction of his
brother-feuilletonists in giving an account of the opera of the
"Cenerentola," where the symbolic slipper has been replaced by a ring,
which symbolizes nothing at all.

Naturally the sumptuary laws about the wearing of fur were perpetually
infringed upon, to the great satisfaction of the furriers. The
costliness of stuffs and furs made a garment in those days a durable
thing,--as lasting as the furniture, the armor, and other items of that
strong life of the fifteenth century. A woman of rank, a seigneur, all
rich men, also all the burghers, possessed at the most two garments for
each season, which lasted their lifetime and beyond it. These garments
were bequeathed to their children. Consequently the clause in the
marriage-contract relating to arms and clothes, which in these days is
almost a dead letter because of the small value of wardrobes that need
constant renewing, was then of much importance. Great costs brought with
them solidity. The toilet of a woman constituted a large capital; it was
reckoned among the family possessions, and was kept in those enormous
chests which threaten to break through the floors of our modern houses.
The jewels of a woman of 1840 would have been the _undress_ ornaments of
a great lady in 1540.

To-day, the discovery of America, the facilities of transportation,
the ruin of social distinctions which has paved the way for the ruin of
apparent distinctions, has reduced the trade of the furrier to what it
now is,--next to nothing. The article which a furrier sells to-day, as
in former days, for twenty _livres_ has followed the dep