“Pink or scarlet, yellow or crimson, pea-green or sky-blue, it was all one: these were all flaunting, giddy colours; and as to the lace I talked of, that was but a colifichet de plus .” 169 And he sighed over my degeneracy. “He could not, he was sorry to say, be so particular on this theme as he could wish: not possessing the exact names of these babioles , 170 he might run into small verbal errors which would not fail to lay him open to my sarcasm, and excite my unhappily sudden and passionate disposition. He would merely say, in general terms⁠—and in these general terms he knew he was correct⁠—that my costume had of late assumed des façons mondaines , 171 which it wounded him to see.”