Great costs brought with them solidity. The toilet of a woman
constituted a large capital; it was reckoned among the family
possessions, and was kept in those enormous chests which threaten to
break through the floors of our modern houses. The jewels of a woman
of 1840 would have been the /undress/ ornaments of a great lady in
1540.

To-day, the discovery of America, the facilities of transportation,
the ruin of social distinctions which has paved the way for the ruin
of apparent distinctions, has reduced the trade of the furrier to what
it now is,--next to nothing. The article which a furrier sells to-day,
as in former days, for twenty /livres/ has followed the depreciation
of money: formerly the /livre/, which is now worth one franc and is
usually so called, was worth twenty francs. To-day, the lesser
bourgeoisie and the courtesans who edge their capes with sable, are
ignorant than in 1440 an ill-disposed police-officer would have
incontinently arrested them and marched them before the justice at the
Chatelet. Englishwomen, who are so fond of ermine, do not know that in
former times none but queens, duchesses, and chancellors were allowed
to wear that royal fur. There are to-day in France several ennobled
families whose true name is Pelletier or Lepelletier, the origin of
which is evidently derived from some rich furrier's counter, for most
of our burgher's names began in some such way.

This digression will explain, not only the long feud as to precedence
which the guild of drapers maintained for two centuries against the
guild of furriers and also of mercers (each claiming the right to walk
first, as being the most important guild in Paris), but it will also
serve to explain the importance of the Sieur Lecamus, a furrier
honored with the custom of two queens, Catherine de' Medici and Mary