Précieuses

, at a time when

courir les ruelles

(to take the run of the bedsides) was a Parisian phrase for fashionable morning calls upon the ladies. The

ruelle

is the little path between the bedside and the wall.

[return]

[Footnote 3:]

Balloon

was a game like tennis played with a foot-ball; but the word may be applied here to a person. It had not the-sense which now first occurs to the mind of a modern reader. Air balloons are not older than 1783.