y.--From Manuscripts in the British Museum.]

[Illustration: Fig. 419.--Costume of Philip the Good, with Hood and
"Cockade."--From a Miniature in a Manuscript of the Period.]

An interesting anecdote relative to this custom is to be found in the
chronicles of Matthew Paris. When St. Louis, to the dismay of all his
vassals, and of his inferior servants, had decided to take up the cross,
he succeeded in associating the nobles of his court with him in his vow by
a kind of pious fraud. Having had a certain number of mantles prepared for
Christmas-day, he had a small white cross embroidered on each above the
right shoulder, and ordered them to be distributed among the nobles on the
morning of the feast when they were about to go to mass, which was
celebrated some time before sunrise. Each courtier received the mantle
given by the King at the door of his room, and put it on in the dark
without noticing the white cross; but, when the day broke, to his great
surprise, he saw the emblem worn by his neighbour, without knowing that he
himself wore it also. "They were surprised and amused," says the English
historian, "at finding that the King had thus piously entrapped them....
As it would have been unbecoming, shameful, and even unworthy of them to
have removed these crosses, they laughed heartily, and said that the good
King, on starting as a pilgrim-hunter, had found a new method of catching
men."

"The chaperon," adds M. Quicherat, "was the national head-dress of the
ancient French, as the _cucullus_, which was its model, was that of the
Gauls. We can imagine its appearance by its resemblance to the domino now
worn at masked balls. The shape was much varied during the reign of
Philippe le Bel, either by the diminution of the cape or by the
lengthening of the hood, which was always sufficiently long to fall on the
shoulders. In the first of these changes, the chaperon no longer being
tied round the neck, required to be held on the head by something more
solid. For this reason it was set on a pad or roll, which changed it into
a regular cap. The material was so stitched as to make it take certain
folds, which were arranged as puffs, as ruffs, or in the shape of a cock's
comb; this last fashion, called _cockade_, was especially in vogue (Fig.
419)--hence the origin of the French epithet _coquard_, which would be now
expressed by the word _dandy_.

"Hats were of various shapes. They were made of different kinds of felt,
or of o