These covers undoubtedly represent the first known form of printed postage-stamps, being the forerunners of the impressed non-adhesive stamps of to-day. The Maury reconstruction is fanciful, but the inscriptions thereon are literally correct. Owing to the removal of the covers (which were probably broken in the process) during the postal operations no originals of these covers are now known to exist. Indeed, the only true relics of the _billets de port payé_ of M. de Villayer are in the two fragments of correspondence between M. Pellisson and the French Sappho, Mlle. Scudéri. Pellisson, who was not noted for his good looks, addressed "Mademoiselle SAPHO, demeurant en la rue, au pays des _Nouveaux Sansomates_, à Paris, par billet de port payé." Signing himself "Pisandre," he inquired if the lady could give him a remedy for love. Her reply, sent by the same means, was, "My dear Pisandre, you have only to look at yourself in a mirror." It was of this correspondent that the lady once declared, "It is permissible to be ugly, but Pellisson has really abused the permission." The London Penny Post of 1680, while it did not use special covers for the prepayment of letters, introduced the system of marking on letters, by means of hand-stamps, the time and place of posting and the intimation "Penny Post Payd." Dockwra, instead of setting up boxes in the public streets, organised a great circle of receiving houses to which the senders took their letters and paid their pennies over the counter. So the principle of the postage-stamp, as we know it to-day, was not represented in the triangular hand-stamps of Dockwra, or of his successors in the official Penny Post. A device representing the arms of Castile and Leon was used in the eighteenth century as a kind of frank or stamp which passed official correspondence through the posts, and in the last quarter of that century the Chevalier Paris de l'Epinard proposed in Brussels the erection of a local post with a mark or stamp of some kind to denote postage prepaid--a plan which, however, was not adopted. [Illustration: A FACSIMILE OF THE ADDRESS SIDE OF A PENNY POST LETTER IN 1686, SHOWING THE "PENY POST PAYD" MARK INSTITUTED BY DOCKWRA AND CONTINUED BY THE GOVERNMENT AUTHORITIES.] [Illustration: FACSIMILE OF THE CONTENTS OF THE PENNY POST LETTER OF 1686.] There is a curious account given by a correspondent in _The Philatelic Record_ [xii. 138] of some so-called stamps said to have been used in the Dutch Indies. The writer, whose account has never so far as I am aware received any definite confirmation, says:--