The book of Dame Alienor, in a series of articles to which we shall merely allude, speaks at great length and enters into detail respecting the interior arrangements of the rooms in which princes and other noble children were born.  The formalities gone through on these occasions were as curious as they were complicated; and Dame Alienor regretted to see them falling into disuse, “owing to which,” she says, “we fear that the possessions of the great houses of the nobility are getting too large, as every one admits, and chicanery or concealment of birth, so as to make away with too many children, is on the increase.”

Mourning is the next subject which we shall notice.  The King never wore black for mourning, not even for his father, but scarlet or violet.  The Queen wore white, and did not leave her apartments for a whole year.  Hence the name of chateau, hotel, or tour de la Reine Blanche, which many of the buildings of the Middle Ages still bear, from the fact that widowed queens inhabited them during the first year of their widowhood.  On occasions of mourning, the various reception rooms of a house were hung with black.  In deep mourning, such as that for a husband or a father, a lady wore neither gloves, jewels, nor silk.  The head was covered with a low black head-dress, with trailing lappets, called chaperons, barbettes, couvre-chefs, and tourets.  A duchess and the wife of a knight or a banneret, on going into mourning, stayed in their apartments for six weeks; the former, during the whole of this time, when in deep mourning, remained lying down all day on a bed covered with a white sheet; whereas the latter, at the end of nine days, got up, and until the six weeks were over, remained sitting in front of the bed on a black sheet.  Ladies did not attend the funerals of their husbands, though it was usual for them to be present at those of their fathers and mothers.  For an elder brother, they wore the same mourning as for a father, but they did not lie down as above described.

[Illustration:  Fig. 396.—­“How the King-at-Arms presents the Sword to the Duke of Bourbon.”—­From a Miniature in “Tournois du Roi Rene,” Manuscript of the Fifteenth Century (Imperial Library of Paris).]

In their everyday intercourse with one another, kings, princes, dukes, and duchesses called one another monsieur and madame, adding the Christian name or that of the estate.  A superior speaking or writing to an inferior, might prefix to his or her title of relationship beau or belle; for instance, mon bel oncle, ma belle cousine.  People in a lower sphere of life, on being introduced to one another, did not say, “Monsieur Jean, ma belle tante”—­“Mr. John, allow me to introduce you to my aunt”—­but simply, “Jean, ma tante.”  The head of a house had his seat under a canopy or dosseret (Fig. 396), which he only relinquished to his sovereign, when he had the honour of entertaining him.  “Such,”