ots displaying more than the regulation part of ankle, the
less sophisticated Compiegnois stared with all their might at the
strange company from the Chateau, and no wonder. Still, the surprise of
the inhabitants was small compared to that of the troopers of the
garrison at the invasion of their riding-school by such a contingent,
which indulged in ring-tilting, not unfrequently in tent-pegging, and,
more frequently still, "in taking a header into space," to the great
amusement of their companions.

[Footnote 67: Anne, Louise, Benedicte de Bourbon, Princesse de
Conde, who married the Duc du Maine, the illegitimate son of
Louis XIV. and Madame de Montespan. She disliked her husband,
whom she considered socially beneath her, and who was very ugly
besides. The lines quoted above are probably not hers, but
Malezieu's, "her poet in ordinary," who also organized her
amateur theatricals.--EDITOR.]

[Footnote 68: Idiomatically, "the bores, the spoil-sports, or
wet-blankets."--EDITOR.]

In those days, Worth was not quite king; the cocodettes of the Imperial
circle were still prophesying on their own account. The "arsenal des
modes," as Madame Emile de Girardin had boastingly called Paris but ten
years previously, had as yet not been boldly taken by storm by a native
of bucolic Lincolnshire. But in a very short time he became the absolute
autocrat in matters of feminine apparel. It was not even an enlightened
despotism. His will was law. Every different entertainment required its
appropriate costume, and the costume was frequently the sole pretext for
the entertainment. And when the ingenuity in devising both was in danger
of becoming exhausted, the supreme resource of these ladies was to turn
themselves into ballerinas; not into ballerinas as King Bomba, or the
Comte Sosthene de la Rochefoucauld, or M. Rouher would have had them,
but into ballerinas with the shortest of gauze skirts and pink silk
fleshings.

One year, I am not certain of the exact one,--I know that the future
Emperor of Germany was there,--the ladies hit upon the idea of giving a
surprise to the Emperor and Empress on the occasion of the latter's
fete-day. A ballet-master was sent for in hot haste from Paris, and "Le
Diable a Quatre" put in rehearsal. Unlike Peter the Great, who had a
soldier hanged--he said shooting was too good for him--for having
represented a disreputable ch