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The gentlemen's costumes are "culottes courtes blanches, white silk stockings, and a dress-coat with gold buttons." My mother-in-law had been under the coiffeur's tongs for hours, and when she reappeared, frizzled and curled, she looked so unnatural that we hardly recognized her. My father-in-law refused point blank to go with us.
"'Pray what are they, please Your Majesty? "'Well, I will give you an instance. For example, 'les culottes' what do you call them? "'Small clothes, replied her ladyship. "'Ma foi! how can they be called small clothes for one large man? Now I do look in the dictionary, and I find, for the word culottes breeches. "'Oh, please Your Majesty, we never call them by that name in England.
Long live the sans culottes! Down with the veto! This tumult reached the salle du Manège, where the Legislative Assembly was then sitting. The head of the cortège stopped at the doors, the columns inundated the court of the Feuillants, the court of the Manège, and all the openings of the salle.
The foremen of the several floors were summoned, and gave it as their humble opinion that we, the aristocratic party in the war, were as bad as the sans culottes "not a pin to choose between us." Well, but no matter for the past: could any plan be devised for a pacific future? Not easily.
Finally Madame DuBarry was supplanted as "public benefactress" by one with an even sharper tang to her tongue, namely, la Belle Guillotine, who blithely led the quadrille d'honneur, with a Robespierre for consort, to music furnished gratis by the raucous throats of ragged sans- culottes.
The gentlemen of the chorus, not willing to go to any extra expense, had culottes courtes and white stockings; the ladies had tried to be more in harmony, but they thought that with rakes, spades, and basket they had quite enough couleur locale. The chamberlain came to ask whether their Majesties should come now.
When again I had the honour of being in the presence of the Duchess, she inquired whether the hunt amused me; and upon my telling her that I had been unable to go, in consequence of the want of the required uniform, the Duchess archly remarked "Ah! M. le Capitaine, parceque vous n'avez pas jamais des culottes."
During the Terror the sans culottes everywhere averred that the Duke was the son of a coachman in the service of the banker Duruet. Doubtless this was false, but the princess had abundant liaisons not much more reputable.
Democratic societies were founded in imitation of Jacobin clubs; everything that was respectable in society was denounced as aristocratic; politeness was looked upon as a sort of lese republicanisme; the common forms of expression in use by the sans culottes were adopted by their American disciples; the title "citizen" became as common in Philadelphia as in Paris; and in the newspapers it was the fashion to announce marriages as partnerships between "Citizen" Brown, Smith, or Jones, and the "citess," who had been wooed to such an association.
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