If the police had contented itself in eliminating the offensive or really dangerous signs, nobody could have blamed it. Unfortunately it was much more aggressive, especially in France, the paradise of the “ronds de cuir,” and attempted to cut down every individual or artistic invention on the part of the signmakers. We are, therefore, not surprised to find so little in modern France that could remind us of the old abundance. The officials of the Revolution proved themselves just as narrow-minded as those of royal times. Both, animated by the bureaucratic instinct to confine everything to narrow rules, tried to suppress all individual poetical invention that once was the charm of the sign. A royal edict of 1763 prescribes a very uninteresting design as a binding model for all signs, giving at the same time the exact measurements of the same and warning the public not to dare to make any changes on the “dessein cy-dessus marqué.” It was a poor consolation for the owners of beautiful old signs that the same edict granted them the great privilege of giving their art-treasures in account as old iron--“quinze deniers la livre”--when paying the bill for the new sign patented by the State. Still more radically acted the men of the Revolution, who sincerely hated the signs, with their crowns and heraldry, as abominable “marques du despotisme.” They made short work, and simply ordered: “Toutes les enseignes qui portent des signes de royalisme, féodalité et de superstition seront renouvelées et remplacées par des signes républicains: les enseignes ne seront plus saillantes mais simplement peintes sur les murs des maisons.”