nces. Taking it altogether, the mob was neither
remarkable for the fashion, nor the cleanliness of the apparel of
its members.

From Rabelais we learn that the passion of play was so strongly
implanted in the students of his day, that they would frequently stake
the points of their doublets at _tric-trac_ or _troumadame_; and but
little improvement had taken place in their morals or manners some
half-century afterward. The buckle at their girdle--the mantle on their
shoulders--the shirt to their back--often stood the hazard of the die;
and hence it not unfrequently happened, that a rusty _pourpoint_ and
ragged _chausses_ were all the covering which the luckless dicers could
enumerate, owing, no doubt, "to the extreme rarity and penury of money
in their pouches."

Round or square caps, hoods and cloaks of black, gray, or other sombre
hue, were, however, the prevalent garb of the members of the university;
but here and there might be seen some gayer specimen of the tribe, whose
broad-brimmed, high-crowned felt hat and flaunting feather; whose
puffed-out sleeves and exaggerated ruff--with starched plaits of such
amplitude that they had been not inappropriately named _plats de Saint
Jean-Baptiste_, from the resemblance which the wearer's head bore to
that of the saint, when deposited in the charger of the daughter of
Herodias--were intended to ape the leading mode of the elegant court of
their sovereign, Henri Trois.

To such an extent had these insolent youngsters carried their license of
imitation that certain of their members, fresh from the fair of
Saint-Germain, and not wholly unacquainted with the hippocras of the
sutlers crowding its mart, wore around their throats enormous collars of
paper, cut in rivalry of the legitimate plaits of muslin, and bore in
their hands long hollow sticks from which they discharged peas and other
missiles, in imitation of the _sarbacanes_ or pea-shooters then in vogue
with the monarch and his favorites.

Thus fantastically tricked out, on that same day--nay, only a few hours
before, and at the fair above mentioned--had these facetious wights,
with more merriment than discretion, ventured to exhibit themselves
before the cortege of Henri, and to exclaim loud enough to reach the
ears of royalty, "_a la fraise on connoit le veau_!" a piece of
pleasantry for which they subsequently paid dear.

Notwithstanding its shabby appearance in detail, the general effect of
this scholastic rabble