Galerie des Modes, 56e Cahier, 5e Figure

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Petit-Maître in Wool Coat, the Pockets, the Collar, and the Buttonholes embroidered: Gilet with pockets, also embroidered etc. (1787)

Petit-Maître. - "Couldn't one add that the Petit-Maître sometimes wants to pass for a wit because he has a little memory, and a little reading, overall from newspapers, from the wits of authors and from the little dictionaries: because he speaks in a nimble  and often ironic way of everything related to exacting and severe morals?  If he takes the burden of preaching, he prefers the study of a comedic role to that of a good chapter of Domat or the Pandects of Pothier;* he loves taking his ennui and leisure out to different spectacles more than attending a scholarly conference on law.  If, to the contrary, it is the party of the sword that he embraces, it is not the laudable desire to be useful to his country and his king, it is for the pleasures that he will find there and because he makes a vow to pass his life in the idleness of visiting, entertainments of all kinds and often in the more dishonorable excesses.  If he engages in the laws of marriage, it is to keep the liberty of missing his appointments, of mocking those appointments, and leaving a tender and virtuous spouse to run after dishonored women for their excess and for love of money, the only motivation of their false love."

The Paper without Title, November 11, 1777

*Jean Domat (1625-1696) and Robert Joseph Pothier (1699-1772), both legal scholars

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