The wax-yellow waistcoat was almost half concealed by the huge projecting ruffles.

The whole costume was set off by hose _a la cosaque_, which appeared to amplify downwards, bulged over the boots, and were slit up in front so as to allow them to be stuffed therein.

Above the waistcoat dangled all sorts of jingling-jangling trinkets, but the boots were provided with spurs of terrible dimensions, so that if a fellow did not look out he might easily have had his eyes poked out.

Such was the martial mode of those days, at the very time when no war was going on anywhere.

The finishing touch to this get-up was supplied by a thin tortoiseshell cane with a bird's head carved in ivory, which a beau with any pretensions to _bon ton_ used regularly to twiddle in his mouth.
"Eh, ventre bleu! eh, sacre bleu!" exclaimed the new-comer (so much, at any rate, he had learnt from Beranger), as he kicked at the kitchen door and shook his saturated mantle.