very long, and if possible of a fair colour, which gave to the young
fashionables, hence called _blondins_, an effeminate air.
Sganarelle addresses Valère (Act ii. Scene 9), likewise as _Monsieur
aux blonds cheveux_. In _The School for Wives_ (Act ii. Scene
6), Arnolphe also tells Agnès not to listen to the nonsense of these
_beaux blondins_. According to Juvenal (Satire VI.) Messalina put a
fair wig on to disguise herself. Louis XIV. did not begin to wear a wig
until 1673.]

those little doublets but just below the arms, and those big collars
falling down to the navel; those sleeves which one sees at table trying
all the sauces, and those petticoats called breeches; those tiny shoes,
covered with ribbons, which make you look like feather-legged pigeons;
and those large rolls wherein the legs are put every morning, as it were
into the stocks, and in which we see these gallants straddle about with
their legs as wide apart, as if they were the beams of a mill?

[Footnote: The original has _marcher écarquillés ainsi que des
volants_. Early commentators have generally stated that
_volants_ means here "the beams of a mill," but MM. Moland and E.
Despois, the last annotators of Molière, maintain that it stands for
"shuttlecock," because the large rolls (_canons_), tied at the knee
and wide at the bottom, bore a great resemblance to shuttlecocks turned
upside down. I cannot see how this can suit the words _marcher
écarquillés_, for the motion of the _canons_ of gallants,
walking or straddling about, is very unlike that produced by
shuttlecocks beaten by battledores; I still think "beams of a mill"
right, because, though the _canons_ did not look like beams of a
mill, the legs did, when in motion.]