houses), and with all the objects that man sets in the public view to tempt his fellows and to offer means of conveyance either to business or to pleasure. At various points the bargees and other river-men held jousts. All through the city there were exhibitions of fireworks and "water serenades," and along the shore, or moving swiftly among the delicate shallops and the heavy barges were gilded pleasure galleys with pennants flying in the wind. The light, mirrored by the water, danced upon the damp walls of the streets which opened upon the quays. The Seine was the light and the joy of Paris, the pride of the public life. Its arms enveloped Notre Dame, the mass of buildings called "the Palais," the Houses of the Parliament and the Bourse, an immense bazar whose galleried shops were the meeting-place of strollers and of gossips. A little below the Palais stretched the Pont-Neuf, with its swarms of street peddlers, jugglers, charlatans, and idlers who passed their days watching the parade of the people of Paris. "The disinherited," unfortunate speculators in the public bounty, sat apart from the stream of travellers, preparing for their business by slipping glass eyes into their heads, or by drawing out their teeth the better to amuse the public and to solicit alms. All the emotions of the people were manifested first upon the river. The Seine was a queen; we have made it a sewer. Even then Paris was a great cosmopolitan city, capable of receiving the people of the world; it was the only place in Europe where a palace could be made ready for guests in less than two hours. In less than one hour the hosts of the inns prepared dinner for one hundred guests at twenty écus a cover. Yet in many respects the powerful city was in a barbarous condition; it was neither lighted nor swept, and as its citizens threw everything out of their windows, the streets were paved with black and infected mud. There was little or nothing like a police system, and the city was sown with "places of refuge" (a survival of the Middle Ages), which served as hiding-places for highwaymen and other malefactors, who enshrined themselves among the shadows and lay in wait for the weak or the unwary. At that time the Duc d'Angoulême, the illegitimate son of Charles IX., used to send his servants into the streets to collect their wages from the passers-by. Having collected their money, the clever fellows returned to the ducal palace. The Duc d'Angoulême possessed the right of shelter, and his palace was vested with all the power of the horns of the altar: once within his gates, the criminal was in safety and "inviolable." The Duc de Beaufort used to send his servants out into the streets to rob travellers for his personal benefit. When the robbers were arrested their proprietor demanded their release and made great talk of an indemnification.