What is left of the Rue Quincampoix, behind the old Tower of Saint-Jacques-la-Boucherie, emphasises the strangeness of this neighbourhood, in which the exterior, though renewed, has been partly preserved, but which has been more modified and transformed as regards inhabitants and customs than perhaps any other quarter. It was, in fact, in the Rue Quincampoix that the famous Law established his offices of the Mississippi Bank. There, all Paris suffered the fever of speculation. The madness was general. For months nothing but folly and ruin reigned. All gambled--duchess, priest, philosopher and courtier, shopkeeper and ballet-actress, peer and lackey, excise-farmer and his clerk. In order to profit by proximity to the celebrated stock-jobber, each shop, room and cellar even, rented at foolishly high prices, was turned into a gaming establishment; and the case is quoted of a cobbler who hired for a hundred livres a day his stall stinking with wax and old leather; the gold mania had broken down all distinctions. And then the fatal crisis came, the panic, the crash. In the Rue Quincampoix one saw none but despairing faces. Every day there was a series of murders, suicides, attacks of lunacy. On one single occasion, twenty-seven bodies of suicides or murdered people were fished out of the river at the nets of Saint-Cloud. To speculate still, money at any price was needed. Highway robbery was practised, and the footpads were of all classes of society. One of these, the young Count de Horn, a relative of the Regent, and already notorious through his follies, hired two rascals of his own kind, enticed a rich young stock-jobber into an inn of the Rue de Venise, stabbed him and took his money. The scandal was enormous! Both Court and City lost their heads. Would justice at last act and severity be shown? There was a good deal of intriguing and excitement; but, finally, the Lieutenant for criminal affairs, acting on the orders of the Regent, arrested the Count de Horn, on the 22nd of March 1720; and, four days after, the latter was broken on the wheel and executed in the centre of the Grève Square, amidst the applause of all Paris. [Illustration: MOLIÈRE'S HOUSE IN THE RUE DE LA TONNELLERIE _Water-colour by Hervier_] The Rue Quincampoix likewise contains some few old mansions now inhabited by certain "medical specialists," cheese-dealers, eau-de-seltz makers, &c. At Nos. 58, 28, 14, 15, and, notably, at No. 10, are seen remnants of forged iron, broken balconies, chipped grotesque masks of stone.... But the whole is tumbling to pieces, and to ruin, and only by a strong effort of the imagination can one reconstitute, out of these wretched fragments, the life of luxury, fever and stock-jobbing that once filled this old street, now foul with chemical smells and rancid odours of fried potatoes. Collé's prophecy has been fulfilled: "One no longer belongs to Paris when one belongs to the Marais!"