Chapter III.

Who Messire Jean Percerin Was.
The king's tailor, Messire Jean Percerin, occupied a rather large house in the Rue St.Honore, near the Rue de l'Arbre Sec.

He was a man of great taste in elegant stuffs, embroideries, and velvets, being hereditary tailor to the king.

The preferment of his house reached as far back as the time of Charles IX.; from whose reign dated, as we know, fancy in _bravery_ difficult enough to gratify.

The Percerin of that period was a Huguenot, like Ambrose Pare, and had been spared by the Queen of Navarre, the beautiful Margot, as they used to write and say, too, in those days; because, in sooth, he was the only one who could make for her those wonderful riding-habits which she so loved to wear, seeing that they were marvelously well suited to hide certain anatomical defects, which the Queen of Navarre used very studiously to conceal.
Percerin being saved, made, out of gratitude, some beautiful black bodices, very inexpensively indeed, for Queen Catherine, who ended by being pleased at the preservation of a Huguenot people, on whom she had long looked with detestation.