Page:A History of Domestic Manners and Sentiments in England During the Middle Ages.djvu/501

 ajid Sentiments. 481 Another of his prints, of the fame date, has furniflied us with a Iketch of a bedroom party (cut No. 305), which is no unapt illuftration of dcmeftic manners in the feventeenth century. It reprefents a cuftom which pre- vailed efpecially in France. A woman, after childbirth, kept her room in ftate, and with great ceremony, and received there daily her female acquaintances, who paffed the afternoon in goffip. This pradice, and No. 305. A Bedroom Party efpecially the converfation which took place at it, were frequent fubjefts of popular fatire, and formed the groundwork of one of the mod cele- brated books of the reign of Louis XIII., entitled " Les Caquets de I'Accouchee," hrft publilhed in 1622. An edition of this curious fatire has been recently publiflied by M. Ed. Fournier, in the introduftion to which, as well as in the text, the reader will find abundant information on this fubjed. 3 a