down to her breasts almost, out of a belief, but without reason, that it is the fashion.  Here we did give one another the lie too much, but were presently friends, and then I to my office, where very late and did much business, and then home, and there find Mr. Batelier, and did sup and play at cards awhile.  But he tells me the newes how the King of France hath, in defiance to the King of England, caused all his footmen to be put into vests, and that the noblemen of France will do the like; which, if true, is the greatest indignity ever done by one Prince to another, and would incite a stone to be revenged; and I hope our King will, if it be so, as he tells me it is: 

[Planche throws some doubt on this story in his “Cyclopaedia of Costume” (vol. ii., p. 240), and asks the question, “Was Mr. Batelier hoaxing the inquisitive secretary, or was it the idle gossip of the day, as untrustworthy as such gossip is in general?” But the same statement was made by the author of the “Character of a Trimmer,” who wrote from actual knowledge of the Court:  “About this time a general humour, in opposition to France, had made us throw off their fashion, and put on vests, that we might look more like a distinct people, and not be under the servility of imitation, which ever pays a greater deference to the original than is consistent with the equality all independent nations should pretend to.  France did not like this small beginning of ill humours, at least of emulation; and wisely considering, that it is a natural introduction, first to make the world their apes, that they may be afterwards their slaves.  It was thought, that one of the instructions Madame [Henrietta, Duchess of Orleans] brought along with her, was to laugh us out of these vests; which she performed so effectually, that in a moment, like so many footmen who had quitted their master’s livery, we all took it again, and returned to our old service; so that the very time of doing it gave a very critical advantage to France, since it looked like an evidence of our returning to her interest, as well as to their fashion.  “The Character of a Trimmer” ("Miscellanies by the Marquis of Halifax,” 1704, p. 164).  Evelyn reports that when the king expressed his intention never to alter this fashion, “divers courtiers and gentlemen gave his Majesty gold by way of wager that he would not persist in this resolution” ("Diary,” October 18th, 1666).]

being told by one that come over from Paris with my Lady Fanshaw, who is come over with the dead body of her husband, and that saw it before he come away.  This makes me mighty merry, it being an ingenious kind of affront; but yet it makes me angry, to see that the King of England is become so little as to have the affront offered him.  So I left my people at cards, and so to my chamber to read, and then to bed.  Batelier did bring us some oysters to-night, and some bottles of new French wine of this year, mighty good, but I drank but little.  This noon Bagwell’s wife was with me at the office, and I did what I would, and at night comes Mrs. Burroughs, and appointed to meet upon the next holyday and go abroad together.