qually natural to have recourse to
the strange creature who dresses her and who thus comes to occupy a very
curious position on the confines of society.

The final trying-on of the dresses of madame la baronne is a grand day,
and often a few friends, both ladies and gentlemen, are invited to
assist at the ceremony; for the Parisiennes recognize in some of their
masculine friends, and particularly in painters, certain talents for
appreciating dress. Why not? Were not these men the great innovators in
modern dressing? and are not men still the great artists in costume?
Madame la baronne prepares herself in one of the little saloons. First
of all come the skirts and the young ladies who preside over the
fabrication of the _dessous_, or underclothing, for it is an axiom in
modern French dress-making that half the success of the toilet depends
on the underclothing, or, as the French put it in their neat way, "_Le
dessous est pour la moitie dans la reussite du dessus_." Then follows
the tying of the skirt of the dress, which is suspended on hooks round
the bottom of the corset, the buttoning of the corsage, the preliminary
tapping and caressing necessary to make the folds of the skirt sit well,
and then madame la baronne makes her appearance triumphantly before her
friends assembled in the adjoining saloon. The great artist himself
deigns to contemplate the finished work. Standing off at some distance,
so as to take in the general effect, as if he were examining a picture,
he gazes upon the dress with impassible eyes, and then, after a
Napoleonic silence, during which all present hold their breath, the
great man expresses his satisfaction, perhaps even falls on his knees in
mute admiration of his masterpiece, or in the twinkling of an eye gives
a pinch to a frill or a twist to a plait which transforms and perfects
the whole, such is the magic power of those marvellous fingers when they
touch the delicate tissues of silk or lace or velvet. Then, while the
master is sating his eyes, all the staff of the house defiles through
the saloon,--the chief saleswoman, the cutter-out, the _chef des jupes_,
the _chef des corsages_, the _chef des garnisseuses_, the _premiere
brodeuse_, and half a dozen other _premieeres_, who open the door and
ask, with caressing intonations of voice and pretty smiles, "_Vent-on me
permettre de voir un pen_?"

What other mysteries are there to be revealed in the house of the
_couturier_? We have glanced a