“Watteau, dans cette enseigne à la fleur de ses ans Des Maîstres de son art imite la manière; Leurs caractères différens, Leurs touches et leur goût composent la matière De ces esquisses élégans.” These words refer to a picture gallery in Gersaint’s shop which Watteau carefully reproduces in the sign, but which to our modern eyes is less fascinating than the elegant customers, ladies and gentlemen, and the amusing eagerness and enthusiasm of these aristocratic connoisseurs. Another sign by Watteau, the loss of which we have to deplore, was the property of a “marchande de modes.” No doubt it tempted many a “Parisienne” to buy rather more of the charming Watteau costumes than were strictly necessary. A modern French artist who sometimes has been honored with the name “Watteau Montmartrois,” the illustrator Willette, has produced in our days the sign for the famous cabaret, the “Chat Noir” prototype of all cabarets in France and elsewhere. Two other signs by his master-hand, “À l’image de Notre Dame” and “À Bonaparte,” may still be seen in Paris on the Quai Voltaire and on the corner of the Rue Bonaparte and the Rue de l’Abbaie. Other great French artists have painted signs occasionally: Greuze did the “Enseigne du Huron” for a tobacco merchant--which may remind us of the wooden Indian, guarding similar American shops in the old days; Carle Vernet and his son Horace Vernet; Géricault, the great sportsman, whose career as an artist was cut short by a violent fall from a horse, is the author of the “Cheval blanc,” which once adorned a tavern in the neighborhood of Paris; Gavarni, the great lithographer, painted a sign, “Aux deux Pierrots,” and drew it later on stone; Carolus Duran’s “enseigne brossée vigoureusement sur une plaque légèrement courbée” was first exhibited in the Salon de la Société Nationale before it was placed over the door of a fencing-school; and many others. Among the French sculptors Jean Goujon, perhaps the greatest of them, the creator of the Fontaine des Innocents in Paris and its charmingly graceful figures, is mentioned as the author of a sign, “La chaste Suzanne,” which once embellished a house in the Rue aux Fêves. To-day a plaster cast has been substituted for the original, bought by an art collector. In the old streets of Paris we may still discover here and there sculptured signs of artistic charm, such as “La Fontaine de Jouvence” in the Rue de Four Saint-Germain, 67, and the fine relief of the “Soleil d’or” in the Rue Saint-Sauveur. The little Bacchus riding so gayly on a cask, who once decorated the “Cabaret du Lapin blanc,” spends to-day a rather dull existence, together with other retired colleagues of his, in the Musée Carnavalet. Our little “Rémouleur,” from the Rue des Nonains d’Hyères, who does not fail to amply moisten his grindstone, is not only a suggestive symbol, but in his dainty rococo dress a very amusing piece of sculpture.