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Amen. After which the Lord's Prayer. Instantly after which, my Son shall get into bed; shall be in bed at half-past 10;" and fall asleep how soon, your Majesty? This is very strict work. This done, he shall as rapidly as possible get on his shoes and spatterdashes; also wash his face and hands, but not with soap.
"My father, who, by God's mercy, is a tailor and hose maker, taught me to cut out that kind of spatterdashes properly called Polainas, which, as your worship knows, cover the fore part of the leg and come down over the instep. These I can cut out in such style, that I could pass an examination for the rank of master in the craft; but my ill luck keeps my talents in obscurity."
He wore a short dark-coloured coat of coarse cloth, scarlet waistcoat and breeches, and black spatterdashes; his cap or bonnet was of black cloth; on the front of it was embroidered in gold letters viva la liberta, and on one side of it was a handsome blue feather and cockade, so that it had an elegant as well as a warlike appearance.
Presently he called out to us to stop, which we did; and when he came up he turned out to be a country student, dressed in brown, with spatterdashes and round-toed shoes. He had a sword in a huge sheath, and a band tied with tape. He had indeed but two tapes, so that his band got out of its place, which he took great pains to rectify.
His fair locks, which the Russian was used to wash every morning, he was now bidden to bedaub with grease and flour, while he energetically cursed the black spatterdashes which it took him an hour to button every morning.
"Battalion Plothow had soon got its clothes on, all to the spatterdashes; and took rank to right and left of the FLECHE, and of my two guns, in front of its post: but on account of the thick fog everything was totally dark.
There was a coarse flannel shirt with a leather stock, a pair of woollen socks, black pantaloons with a line of red piping, spatterdashes, a tunic such as I've described with pipe-clayed belt and crossbelt and last of all a great japanned shako mounted with a brass plate and chin-strap and a scarlet-and-white cockade like a shaving-brush.
The flaps of our saddles, the great spatterdashes that protected our feet from the mud, and the broad stirrup-straps were covered with carved and embossed patterns; indeed almost all leather-work is decorated in this way, and the saddle-makers delight in ornamenting their wares with silver plates and bosses; so that it was not surprising that our saddles and bridles should have cost, though second-hand, nearly as much as the horses.
I had a short jacket of goat's skin, whose hair hung down such a length on each side, that it reached down to the calves of my legs. As for shoes and stockings, I had none, but made a semblance of something, I know not what to call them; they were made like buskins, and laced on the sides like spatterdashes, Barbarously shaped like the rest of my habit.
It actually took twenty years to teach the general officers of the European armies, that men could fight without spatterdashes, that hair-powder was not heroism, and that long tails were only an imitation of the monkey; that muskets did not fire the worse for having brown barrels, and that the cuirass was a better defence for the body of the dragoon than a cloth waistcoat, however covered with embroidery.
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