Methinks a French tailor, with an ell in his hand, looks like
the enchantress Circe over the companions of Ulysses, and changes them
into as many forms.... Something I would indulge to youth; something to
age and humor. But what have we to do with these foreign butterflies? In
God's name, let the change be our own, not borrowed of others; for why
should I dance after a Monsieur's flageolet, that have a set of English
viols for my concert? We need no French inventions for the stage or for
the back."--From a pamphlet entitled _Tyrannus, or the Mode_.
"Si le costume bourgeois," says George Sand, in _Le Peche de M.
Antoine_, "de notre epoque est le plus triste, le plus incommode et
le plus disgracieux, que la mode ait jamais invente, c'est surtout au
milieu des champs que tous ses inconvenients et toutes ses laideurs
revoltent.... Au milieu de ce cadre austere et grandiose, qui transporte
l'imagination au temps de la poesie primitive, apparaisse cette mouche
parasite, le _monsieur_ aux habits noirs, au menton rase, aux mains
gantees, aux jambes maladroites, et ce roi de la societe n'est plus
qu'un accident ridicule, une tache importune dans le tableau.
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