"No one could obtain permission to give his wife four dresses a year, unless he had an income of six thousand francs."
"What business had the laws to interfere with these things, I should like to know?" inquired Mrs. Wolston.
"Those who possessed two thousand francs income were only allowed to wear one dress a year, the cloth for which was not permitted to exceed tenpence a yard; but ladies of rank could go as high as fifteen pence."
"Philip le Bel must have been an old woman," insisted Mrs. Wolston.
"No private citizen was permitted to use a carriage, and such persons were likewise interdicted the use of flambeaux."
"They were permitted to break their necks at all events, that is something."
"In England, the same primitive simplicity prevailed; Queen Elizabeth is said to have breakfasted on a gallon of ale, her dining-room floor was strewn every day with fresh straw or rushes, and she had only one pair of silk stockings in her entire wardrobe."
"At the same time," observed Ernest, "these usages stand in singular contradiction to those that prevailed at an earlier age. The supper of Lucullus rarely cost him less than thirty thousand francs, and he could entertain five and twenty thousand guests. Six citizens of Rome possessed a great part of Africa. Domitius had an estate in France of eighty thousand acres."
"Poor fellow!"
"When Nero went to Baize he was accompanied by a thousand chariots and two thousand mules caparisoned with silver. Poppæa followed him with five hundred she asses to furnish milk for her bath. Cicero purchased a dining-room table that cost him a million sesterces, or about two hundred thousand francs. I can understand the progress of civilization, and I can also understand civilization remaining stationary for a given period; but I cannot understand why a citizen of ancient Rome should be able to lodge twenty-five thousand men, whilst a king of France could scarcely keep the ducks from waddling about his apartments, and a queen of England could fare no better than a ploughman."