In the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries the trade of the furrier was one of the most flourishing industries.  The difficulty of obtaining furs, which, being all brought from the north, required long and perilous journeys, gave a very high price and value to those products.  Then, as now, high prices led to consumption; for vanity likes to override obstacles.  In France, as in other kingdoms, not only did royal ordinances restrict the use of furs to the nobility (proved by the part which ermine plays in the old blazons), but also certain rare furs, such as vair (which was undoubtedly Siberian sable), could not be worn by any but kings, dukes, and certain lords clothed with official powers.  A distinction was made between the greater and lesser vair.  The very name has been so long disused, that in a vast number of editions of Perrault’s famous tale, Cinderella’s slipper, which was no doubt of vair (the fur), is said to have been made of verre (glass).  Lately one of our most distinguished poets was obliged to establish the true orthography of the word for the instruction of his brother-feuilletonists in giving an account of the opera of the “Cenerentola,” where the symbolic slipper has been replaced by a ring, which symbolizes nothing at all.

Naturally the sumptuary laws about the wearing of fur were perpetually infringed upon, to the great satisfaction of the furriers.  The costliness of stuffs and furs made a garment in those days a durable thing,—­as lasting as the furniture, the armor, and other items of that strong life of the fifteenth century.  A woman of rank, a seigneur, all rich men, also all the burghers, possessed at the most two garments for each season, which lasted their lifetime and beyond it.  These garments were bequeathed to their children.  Consequently the clause in the marriage-contract relating to arms and clothes, which in these days is almost a dead letter because of the small value of wardrobes that need constant renewing, was then of much importance.  Great costs brought with them solidity.  The toilet of a woman constituted a large capital; it was reckoned among the family possessions, and was kept in those enormous chests which threaten to break through the floors of our modern houses.  The jewels of a woman of 1840 would have been the undress ornaments of a great lady in 1540.

To-day, the discovery of America, the facilities of transportation, the ruin of social distinctions which has paved the way for the ruin of apparent distinctions, has reduced the trade of the furrier to what it now is,—­next to nothing.  The article which a furrier sells to-day, as in former days, for twenty livres has followed the depreciation of money:  formerly the livre, which is now worth one franc and is usually so called, was worth twenty francs.  To-day, the lesser bourgeoisie and the courtesans who edge their capes with sable, are ignorant than in 1440 an ill-disposed police-officer would have