Note 161 — III. OF WOMEN.
Henri Van Laun translation
The original has dans une ruelle. Ruelle means literally “a small street,” hence the narrow opening between the wall and the bed, on which bed superfine ladies, gaily dressed, were lying when they received their friends, and thus ruelle came to mean “any fashionable assembly.” In Dr. Ashʼs “Dictionary of the English Language,” London, 1755, ruelle is still defined “a little street, a circle, an assembly at a private house.”