Fashion altered the shape of the Muff considerably under Louis XIV. From the rare documents which we have been able to catalogue, we have easily found numerous modifications in both form and volume. Sometimes narrow and long, sometimes broad and short, it would be impossible to assign to this little chattel an exact type for all that epoch.
The Muff triumphed already, under Louis XIII., in the empire of oglings and at the Place Royale, as it reigned later at Versailles, and showed itself in sedan chairs in the midst of the alleys of the park at the visiting hour, lending always to woman a charming countenance and exquisite graces.
Scarron, in his Poésies Diverses, has left us in four verses a pretty picture of manners for any one who could morally develop it. The poor cripple Scarron certainly had no need of a Muff in his arm-chair!—
My wife then leaves at once, though she
All perils should divide with me;
She takes her Muff and goes
To see some one she knows. . . .
But let us leave the age of big wigs and Fontange head-dresses, and penetrate into the age of powder and patches, into the age of Voltaire, who, à propos of one of his characters in Micromégas, wrote:
“Imagine a very small Muff-dog following a captain of the Guards of the King of Prussia.”
