It is often said what a filthy palace Versailles was in its day

It is often said what a filthy palace Versailles was in its day. There is talk of women merely hitching up their skirts to relieve themselves on the very spot where nature overtook them, and of men easing themselves straight from the balustrade in the middle of the royal chapel, but the story of Marie Antoinette being struck on the head by human excrement thrown from a window while she strolled across an inner courtyard is something new. So, by way of illustration, I have chosen a portrait of the queen in a hat, which would plainly have done her no harm that day. Incidentally, this portrait by the court painter Élisabeth Vigée Le Brun was called provocative, since it was not fitting for a queen to pose in her underwear: a simple cotton dress without a corset was perceived in society purely as a nightgown, so the king commissioned the same portrait again, in a more decorous outfit, and Marie Antoinette was put into a blue dress with a bow. One might ask where so many prejudices come from in people with such lax standards of personal hygiene and of the natural functions of the body.