or
no, lent a sharp spur to the voluptuous revel. Then broke out those
unclean fashions of an age when ladies made themselves taller by
wearing the Devil's horned-bonnet, and gloried in dressing as if they
were all with child.[64] To this fashion they clung for the next forty
years. The younger folk on their side, not to be behind in
shamelessness, eclipsed them in the display of naked charms. The woman
wore Satan on her forehead in the shape of a horned head-dress: on the
feet of the bachelor and the page he was visible in the tapering
scorpion-like tips of their shoes. Under the mask of animals they
represented the lowest side of brute nature. The famous child stealer,
Retz, here took his first flight in villany. The great feudal ladies,
unbridled Jezebels, with less sense of shame in them than the men,
scorned all disguise whatever; displayed themselves with face
uncovered. In their sensual rages, in their mad parade of debauchery,
the king, the whole company might see the bottomless pit itself
yawning for the life, the feeling, the body, and the soul of each.

[64] Even in a very mystic theme, in a work of such genius as
the _Lamb_ of Van Eyck (says John of Bruges), all the Virgins
seem big. It was only the quaint fashion of the fifteenth
century.

Out of such doings come forth the conquered of Agincourt, a poor
generation of effete nobles, in whose miniatures you shiver to see the
falling away of their sorry limbs, as shown through the treacherous
tightness of their clothes.[65]

[65] This wasting away of a used-up, enervated race, mars the
effect of all those splendid miniatures of the Court of
Burgundy, the Duke of Berry, &c. No amount of clever handling
could make good works of art out of subjects so very
pitiable.

* * * * *

Much to be pitied is the Witch who, when the great lady came home from
that royal feast, became her bosom-counsellor and agent charged with
the doing of impossible things.

In her own castle, indeed, the lady is almost, if not all alone,
amidst a crowd of single men. To judge from romances you would think
she delighted in girding herself with an array of fair girls. Far
otherwise are we taught by history and common sense. Eleanor is not
so silly as to match herself against Rosamond. With all their own
rakishness, those queens and great ladies could be frightfully
jealous; witness she who is said by Henry Martin to