he
perched upon a corner of my study-table, and put her little feet upon
an old "Froissart" which filled the armchair.

"To be listening to our nonsense!" said Pheasant.

"Lying in wait for us!" said Dove.

"Well, now, you have brought us all down on you," said Humming-Bird,
"and you won't find it so easy to be rid of us. You will have to
answer all our questions."

"My dears, I am at your service, as far as mortal man may be," said
I.

"Well, then," said Humming-Bird, "tell us all about everything,--how
things come to be as they are. Who makes the fashions?"

"I believe it is universally admitted that, in the matter of feminine
toilet, France rules the world," said I.

"But who rules France?" said Pheasant. "Who decides what the fashions
shall be there?"

"It is the great misfortune of the civilized world, at the present
hour," said I, "that the state of morals in France is apparently at
the very lowest ebb, and consequently the leadership of fashion is
entirely in the hands of a class of women who could not be admitted
into good society, in any country. Women who can never have the name
of wife,--who know none of the ties of family,--these are the
dictators whose dress and equipage and appointments give the law,
first to France, and through France to the civilized world. Such was
the confession of Monsieur Dupin, made in a late speech before the
French Senate, and acknowledged, with murmurs of assent on all sides,
to be the truth. This is the reason why the fashions have such an
utter disregard of all those laws of prudence and economy which
regulate the expenditures of families. They are made by women whose
sole and only hold on life is personal attractiveness, and with whom
to keep this up, at any cost, is a desperate necessity. No moral
quality, no association of purity, truth, modesty, self-denial, or
family love, comes in to hallow the atmosphere about them, and create
a sphere of loveliness which brightens as mere physical beauty fades.
The ravages of time and dissipation must be made up by an unceasing
study of the arts of the toilet. Artists of all sorts, moving in their
train, rack all the stores of ancient and modern art for the
picturesque, the dazzling, the grotesque; and so, lest these Circes of
society should carry all before them, and enchant every husband,
brother, and lover, the staid and lawful Penelopes leave the hearth
and home to follow in their triumphal march and imitate their arts.