val windows, and sometimes with lofty towers and
crenelated battlements. As a class they become richer and obtain
recognition. When Philippe Auguste contemplated paving some of the
streets of Paris--they had been mere roads of mud--he sent for the rich
citizens to ask their assistance. One of these, Richard de Poissi, is
said to have contributed eleven thousand marks in silver. Then the
guilds of the tradesmen become wealthy and exercise considerable
political power. It is in the reign of Saint Louis that the trade guilds
of Paris become so numerous that Etienne Boileau compiles a _Livre des
metiers_, containing the statutes of the greater number of them.

In the dress of all classes above the abjectly poor there was a tendency
toward greater show, vainly repressed during part of the thirteenth
century, but continuing to increase even under repression. The standard
costume during the whole period of the Crusades was indeed plain, and
very similar for men and for women. On their heads ordinary women wore
only a sort of coif, or the cowl attached to the long robe or gown,
though there were a few ladies of fashion who scandalized the community
by wearing tall, pointed bonnets, sometimes cone-shaped, sometimes with
two horns, and with a veil hanging from the tip to form a sort of
wimple. The chief article in the dress of both sexes was the garment
called a cotte-hardie, consisting of a long robe reaching to the feet
and confined at the waist by a girdle. The sleeves of the cotte-hardie
were, among sober-minded dames, rather close fitting and plain; fashion
had them made absurdly large, flaring at the wrist to many times the
dimensions of the upper part, and sometimes so long as not only to cover
the whole hand, but to trail upon the ground. Over the _cotte-hardie_
was worn the _surcot_, a sort of tunic, shorter than the undergarment,
and either without sleeves or with elbow sleeves. On grand occasions a
handsome mantle was worn, but the use of this was generally restricted
to noble ladies. The shoes were usually simple, lacing higher on the leg
than what we now call shoes; sometimes, however, they were made of gaily
colored leathers, richly embroidered, or even of cloth of gold, damask,
or the like. The days of high heels had not yet come, and women's shoes
seem never to have been quite so outrageous as those long pointed shoes
worn by the dandies of the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries.

It was at the other end of the co