We had for neighbor, in the Rue St. Honoré, two doors lower down than our own, a hair-dresser, named Léger. This hair-dresser, like all his confrères, was a staunch Royalist. No doubt the reader would ask the reason why hair-dressers were all Royalists.
That is easily explained.
The hair-dressers’ was one of the corporations that had suffered the most in the Revolution. Those under Louis XV, and even under Louis XVI—who had invented such fantastic head-dresses, worn by the ladies of the nobility for more than half a century—were a body of men not to be despised.
Hair-dressers of this period had a select circle of their own, and many privileges, which they would not surrender, even on the night of the 4th of August.
Not only could they mix in the society of the larger circles, but had the entrées to the more select boudoirs of the noblesse, and also carried the sword, as was customary with gentlemen.
It is true that this sword, at most times, was of no more use than a harlequin’s wand, being but a mere toy. Of some, the blades were simply wood, others having no blade at all, the handle being attached to the scabbard.
But for some time past things went from bad to worse with this celebrated corporation of hair-dressers. Their society was gradually sinking into oblivion, to them worse than death, and Talma had just struck the last blow even to the head-dressing of men, by his creation of the character of Litus, which had caused his name to be given to the fashion of wearing the hair cut short.
The most desperate enemies of the new government—that is to say, the revolutionary government—was, therefore, the hair-dressers.
That was not all. By frequenting the mansions of the aristocracy—by holding so often between their hands, for more than an hour at a time, the heads of the handsomest ladies of the Court—by chatting with the several coxcombs whose hair they were in the habit of dressing—by serving their noble clients in the character of messengers of love—by becoming the confidantes of the passions of their employers—the hair-dressers had become libertines, for the advantage of their pockets.
Now, on Saturday evening, as I have already stated, at the very moment when the municipality issued the decree against the petitioners, our neighbor Léger came and asked M. Duplay to lend him a centre-bit.