of Versailles was jealous of its Spanish
inquisitorial etiquette. It had been strictly wedded to its pageantries
since the time of the great Anne of Austria. The sagacious and prudent
provisions of this illustrious contriver were deemed the ne plus ultra of
royal female policy. A cargo of whalebone was yearly obtained by her to
construct such stays for the Maids of Honour as might adequately conceal
the Court accidents which generally--poor ladies!--befell them in
rotation every nine months.

"But Marie Antoinette could not sacrifice her predilection for a
simplicity quite English, to prudential considerations. Indeed, she was
too young to conceive it even desirable. So much did she delight in
being unshackled by finery that she would hurry from Court to fling off
her royal robes and ornaments, exclaiming, when freed from them, 'Thank
Heaven, I am out of harness!'

"But she had natural advantages, which gave her enemies a pretext for
ascribing this antipathy to the established fashion to mere vanity. It
is not impossible that she might have derived some pleasure from
displaying a figure so beautiful, with no adornment except its native
gracefulness; but how great must have been the chagrin of the Princesses,
of many of the Court ladies, indeed, of all in any way ungainly or
deformed, when called to exhibit themselves by the side of a bewitching
person like hers, unaided by the whalebone and horse-hair paddings with
which they had hitherto been made up, and which placed the best form on a
level with the worst? The prudes who practised illicitly, and felt the
convenience of a guise which so well concealed the effect of their
frailties, were neither the least formidable nor the least numerous of
the enemies created by this revolution of costume; and the Dauphine was
voted by common consent--for what greater crime could there be in
France?--the heretic Martin Luther of female fashions! The four
Princesses, her aunts, were as bitter against the disrespect with which
the Dauphine treated the armour, which they called dress, as if they
themselves had benefited by the immunities it could, confer.

"Indeed, most of the old Court ladies embattled themselves against Marie
Antoinette's encroachments upon their habits. The leader of them was a
real medallion, whose costume, character, and notions spoke a genealogy
perfectly antediluvian; who even to the latter days of Louis XV., amid a
Court so irregular, persisted in he