e laughing mouths, and how gay we were in those days! youth was a bouquet; every young man terminated in a branch of lilacs or a tuft of roses; whether he was a shepherd or a warrior; and if, by chance, one was a captain of dragoons, one found means to call oneself Florian.
People thought much of looking well. They embroidered and tinted themselves.
A bourgeois had the air of a flower, a Marquis had the air of a precious stone.
People had no straps to their boots, they had no boots.
They were spruce, shining, waved, lustrous, fluttering, dainty, coquettish, which did not at all prevent their wearing swords by their sides.
The humming-bird has beak and claws.
That was the day of the Galland Indies.
One of the sides of that century was delicate, the other was magnificent; and by the green cabbages! people amused themselves.
To-day, people are serious.
The bourgeois is avaricious, the bourgeoise is a prude; your century is unfortunate.
People would drive away the Graces as being too low in the neck.
Alas! beauty is concealed as though it were ugliness.
Since the revolution, everything, including the ballet-dancers, has had its trousers; a mountebank dancer must be grave; your rigadoons are doctrinarian.
It is necessary to be majestic. People would be greatly annoyed if they did not carry their chins in their cravats.