DRESS. 



137 



insects owe their inagnifioenoe to their wings alone, the 



musk-beetle is all over of the same colour and the same 

 splendour. 



THE unSE-SEETLK. 



This reminds me of the adornments of which men are 

 often so proud, and which both sexes so laboriously employ 

 to please and seduce each other. I can easily understand 

 that an insect, which glitters in the sun with the richest 

 colours, should be proud of its dress, — I could pardon the 

 bird, which in the morning shakes itself in the earliest ray of 

 the dawn, and, on finding itself richly clothed, should be 

 a little vain of its plumage, — because the wings of the but- 

 terfly and the feathers of the bird belong to them, and are 

 parts of them ; but is there anything that ought to render 

 them more humble than the toilette of a man or a woman 1 

 Is it not, in the first place, a melancholy admission, that our • 

 body is a carcase which we can only embellish by concealing 

 it, an object for which we employ means the most violent 

 and extraordinary ? That ring, now, — ^that ring of gold, set 

 off by a large pearl, worth, perhaps, a thousand crowns, — has 

 been dug from the bowels of the earth, and raked from the 

 abyss of the sea ! and its only object is to conceal a very 

 small part of the hand, which appears to you less beautifiJ 

 than a little metal and the secretion of an oyster ; for women 

 who are quite satisfied with their bands never wear rings. 



And all the rest of your dress is composed of the cast-off 



