Not many years ago, it was common, in Paris, to see counsellors, abbés, and military officers, as well as _petits-maîtres_ of every denomination, full dressed, that is, with their hat under their arm, their sword by their side, and their hair in a bag, standing in the open street, with one leg cocked up on a stool, while a rough Savoyard or Auvergnat hastily cleaned their shoes with a coarse mixture of lamp-black and rancid oil. At the present day, the _décrotteurs_ or shoe-blacks still exercise their profession on the _Pont Neuf_ and in other quarters; but, as a refinement of the art, there is also opened, at each of the principal entrances of the _Palais du Tribunat_, a _cabinet de décrotteur_, or small apartment, where you are invited to take a chair, and presented with the daily papers. The artist, with due care and expedition, first removes the dirt from your shoes or boots with a sponge occasionally moistened in water, and by means of several pencils, of different sizes, not unlike those of a limner, he then covers them with a jetty varnish, rivaling even japan in lustre. This operation he performs with a gravity and consequence that can scarcely fail to excite laughter. Yet, according to the trite proverb, it is not the customer who ought to indulge in mirth, but the _artist_. Although his price is much dearer than that demanded by the other professors of this art, his cabinet is seldom empty from morning to night; and, by a simple calculation, his pencil is found to produce more than that of some good painters of the modern French school. At the first view of the matter, it should appear that the other speculation might have been hit on by any man with a nose to his face; but, on more mature consideration, one is induced to think that its author was a person of some learning, and well read in ancient history. He, no doubt, took the hint from VESPASIAN. As that emperor blushed not to make the urine of the citizens of Rome a source of revenue, so the learned projector in question rightly judged that, in a place of such resort as the _Palais du Tribunat_, he might, without shame or reproach, levy a small tax on the Parisians, by providing for their convenience in a way somewhat analogous. His penetration is not unhandsomely rewarded; for he derives an income of 12,000 francs, or £500 sterling, from his _cabinets d'aisance_. Since political causes first occasioned the shuting up of the old _Théâtre Français_ in the _Faubourg St. Germain_, now reduced to a shell by fire, Melpomene and Thalia have taken up their abode in the south-west angle of the _Palais du Tribunat_, and in its north-west corner is another theatre, on a smaller scale, where Momus holds his court; so that be you seriously, sentimentally, or humorously disposed, you may, without quitting the shelter of the piazzas, satisfy your inclination. Tragedy, Comedy, and Farce all lie before you within the purlieus of this extraordinary edifice.