The journeyman had to work in his master's workshop, and it was exceptional for him to go alone to a client (in which case he was duly authorized by the master), or to finish an urgent piece of work at home. The length of the working day was regulated by the daylight. Lighting was in those days so imperfect that night work was forbidden, as nothing fine or highly finished could be done by the dim light of candles. This rule could never be broken except in certain crafts--by the founders, for example, whose work could not be interrupted without serious loss--or by those who worked for the king, the bishop, or the lord.[14] The rest worked from sunrise to sunset, an arrangement which made summer and winter days curiously unequal. Some neighbouring clock marked the beginning and end of the day, and a few rests amounting to about an hour and a half broke its length. All this was very indefinite, and disputes were frequent as to the time for entering or leaving the workshop. The Paris workmen often complained of being kept too late, and of the danger of being obliged to go home in the dark at the mercy of thieves and footpads. It was necessary for the royal provost to issue a decree before the difficulty was overcome. The workers, however, reaped the benefit of the many holidays which starred the calendar and brought a little brightness into the grey monotony of the days. The Sunday holiday was scrupulously observed without interfering with the Saturday afternoon, when work stopped earlier, or the religious festivals which often fell on a week day. It has been calculated[15] that the days thus officially kept as holidays amounted to at least thirty, and it may be safely said that work was less continuous then than nowadays. To leave work voluntarily at normal times was strictly forbidden, and the police took up and imprisoned any idlers or vagabonds found wandering in the towns. But even in those days Monday was often taken as an unauthorized holiday. Certain crafts had their regular dead season:[16] thus at Paris among the bucklers (makers of brass buckles) the _valets_ were dismissed during the month of August; but such holidays, probably unpaid, were rare, as was also the arrangement to be found among the weavers at Lunéville, which limited the amount of work a journeyman might do in a day.