Along with all this honest traffic proceed the amusements worthy and unworthy. There are several exhibitors of trick dogs and performing bears. In a cage there is a creature called a "lion," though it is certainly a sick, spiritless, and mangy one; there are also male and female rope dancers and acrobats, professional story tellers, professors of white magic, and, of course, jongleurs of varying quality sawing their viols, or reciting romances and merry _fabliaux_--clever tales, though often indescribably coarse. There are, in addition (let the sinful truth be told) perfect swarms of brazen women of an evil kind; and there is enough heady wine being consumed to fill a brook into the Claire. The sergeants continually have to separate drunkards who get to fighting, and to roll their "full brothers"--more completely overcome--into safe places where they can sleep off their liquor unkicked by horses and uncrushed by constantly passing carts. This bustle continues two weeks. By that time everybody who has come primarily to buy has spent all his money. If he has come to sell, presumably he is satisfied. The drunkards are at last sad and sober. "Hare! Hare!" cry the sergeants on the evening of the last day. The fair is over. The next morning the foreign merchants pack their wares, strike their tents, and wander off to another market fifty miles distant, while the Pontdebois traders and industrialists resume their normal activity. They have stocked up with necessary raw materials for the year, they have absorbed many new ideas as to how they can make better wares or trade to more advantage; yet probably most of them are grumbling against "those Germans and Flemings and Jews whom the bishop turns loose on us. Blessed saints! how much money they have taken out of the neighborhood!" But the bishop, when his provost reports the tax receipts, is extraordinarily well satisfied. FOOTNOTES: [111] These regulations for a long period were of marked value for insuring a high grade of workmanship according to traditional methods, but later they became a most serious impediment to any improvements in industrial processes. Originality, new designs, and labor-saving devices were practically prohibited, and some industries were destined to remain almost stagnant down to the French Revolution. [112] Among the oldest traceable guilds in Paris were the Master Chandlers and Oilmen, who received royal privileges in 1061. The butchers, tanners, shoemakers, drapers, furriers, and purse makers, were other old Parisian guilds. [113] The fullers were always suing the weavers. Could the latter, if they wished, dye the cloth which they themselves had woven? Bakers were always at law with keepers of small cookshops who baked their own bread, etc. [114] Certain saints would naturally be the patrons of certain particular crafts--_e.g._, St. Joseph of the carpenters, St. Peter of the fishmongers, etc.