Advertising signs no longer creaked from iron gibbets, threatening to tumble and crush the passers-by. Spurs as big as cartwheels and the huge gloves and giant boots which formerly proclaimed the business carried on under them had been banished or were now screwed securely to the walls, which gave the streets a clean-shaven appearance. The candle lanterns that used to splutter and drip and go out, leaving Paris in darkness, were replaced, on nights when the moon was off duty, by lamps burning "tripe-oil" and fitted with reflectors. By means of this brilliant improvement fashionable quarters were almost safe after nightfall, whereas in former years there had been danger of attack and robbery, even within pistol-shot of the grand home where Lafayette went to live after his marriage. In addition to the lights glowing steadily under their reflectors--one light to every seventy or one hundred inhabitants--there were many professional lantern-bearers whose business in life was escorting wayfarers to and from their homes. Paris after nightfall was atwinkle, for "to live by candle-light is a sign of opulence." There was a fire department, newly installed, ready to come on call, and, strange to say, "it cost absolutely nothing to be rescued." That, however, was the only cheap thing in Paris. "The poorer one is the more it costs to live!" was a cry that rose then, as now, [Pg 25]in all its bitterness. With money anything could be bought. Voltaire declared that a Roman general on the day of his triumph never approached the luxury to be found here. Wares came to the city from the ends of the earth, and Parisians invented new wares of their own. Somebody had contrived umbrellas like those used in the Orient, except that these folded up when not in use. Somebody else had invented the business of renting them at a charge of two liards to gallants crossing the Pont Neuf who wished to shield their complexions. There were little stations at each end of the bridge where the money could be paid or the umbrella given up. Even seasons of the year set no limit to extravagance in Paris. "A bouquet of violets in the dead of winter costs two louis (about nine dollars), and some women wear them!"