The excitement and frenzy however reached its highest point in the Rue Quincampoix. Here was the Stock Exchange of the day. A short narrow street of fifty yards in length and two or three in breadth, it ran from the Rue aux Ours to the Rue Aubry-le-Boucher, and contained the offices and houses of the bankers of the period. So confined was it that the crowds of speculators entirely blocked it as a thoroughfare, and drivers were prohibited from making use of it. Gates were erected at each end, and guards with drums were stationed to inform people when the street was opened or closed for business. Other restrictions were imposed upon the use of the street. The entrance by the Rue Aubry-le-Boucher was reserved for members of the aristocracy, and that by the Rue aux Ours for all others, but inside the gates no distinction of rank was respected. On Sundays and fête days the street was closed altogether, and in order that business might not proceed to hours which would disturb the rest of those who resided in the neighbourhood the guards were ordered to clear the speculators from the street at a reasonable hour in the evening. As in the case of the tenants and proprietors of houses in the Rue Vivienne, opportunity to even greater extent was afforded those who resided in the Rue Quincampoix to let their houses as dwellings or offices to the infatuated crowd of speculators. A house for which a rent of eight hundred livres per annum was paid secured without difficulty for its occupier a return of 5000 to 12,000 livres per month, single rooms in many cases returning as much as 1500 livres per month. Fortunes were made by many people who anticipated the demand for accommodation and secured a number of houses at little above their normal rent for the purpose of letting at these extravagant figures. Curious, too, were the methods adopted by some for the making of money. We read of a hunchback who converted his deformity to the original and profitable use of a writing-desk. In a very few days he had accumulated the sum of 150,000 livres from the fees he received from the speculators who took advantage of the novel purpose to which he put his hunch. The same eccentric occupation enabled a soldier, possessed of very broad shoulders, to obtain his discharge from the army and purchase an estate in the provinces to which he prudently retired before the fever of speculation had enthralled him. We read too of a cobbler who plied his trade in a very primitive manner under four planks secured to a wall. The crowds of ladies who were drawn to the Rue Quincampoix as interested spectators in its exciting scenes suggested to the cobbler the means of gaining in a short time more than the labour of a lifetime could secure for him. He furnished his diminutive stall with chairs, and these he let out to ladies at exorbitant charges gladly paid. He then added to his stock a supply of pens and paper which were taken advantage of by brokers and others who