the great artists of the Second Empire, Worth, Aurelly,
Pingat, and their rivals, who utterly revolutionized feminine costume
and endeavored to direct it in the paths of art, good taste, and
comfort. Enthusiasts of grace and beauty, these artists set themselves
the task of preventing the inconstant goddess of fashion from continuing
to wander off into ugliness, deformity, and absurdity. In their devotion
to art, beauty, and luxury, they determined never to forget fitness and
comfort, and since their initiative has regulated the vagaries of
fashion we must admit that our women have never been the victims of such
inconvenient, ugly, and absurd inventions as crinoline, leg-o'-mutton
sleeves, the _coiffure a la fregate_, and the various other
monstrosities of the Republic, the Directory, and the Restoration,
which, thanks to the traditional supremacy of France in matters of
fashion, made their way, more or less modified, all over the world. The
modern artists in dress consider justly that what is most important in a
dress is the woman who wears it, and that their object should be to set
her off to the best advantage, and not to make her remarked,--in short,
to make a toilet which will be to the wearer what the frame is to the
portrait. The _role_ which the _couturier_ plays, not only in Parisian
life but in the life of the whole civilized world, is so important and
so curious that I have thought it might interest the reader to see the
great artist at home, surrounded by his customers and his assistants,
and to catch a brief glimpse of the nature and peculiarities of the
creature. My description of the type will be in general, of course, but
founded on exact observation of individuals.

The high-priests of Parisian fashion have their shrines up-stairs. Where
the highest perfection is aimed at, shops are nowhere. The _grand
couturier_ makes no outside show. You will find him occupying two or
three floors in one of those plain, flat-fronted Restoration houses
which line the Rue de la Paix, the Rue Taitbout, the Rue Louis-le-Grand,
or the Faubourg St.-Honore. Passing through a square _porte-cochere_ as
broad as it is high, you find on the right or left hand a glass door
opening on a staircase covered with a thick red carpet. On the landings
are divans, and sometimes a palm of a dracaena. Through an open door on
the ground-floor you see the packing-room, where marvels of silk and
lace are being enveloped in mountains of tissue-pa