In France this sign was equally common. Jean Carcain, one of the early Parisian publishers and printers, (1487,) adopted it for his shop. One of his books has the following quaint impress:-- “Parisii Sancti Pons est Michaelis in Urbe; Multae illic aedes; notior una tamen; Hanc cano, quae _Sacri Baptistae fronte_ notata est Hic respondebit Bibliopola tibi; Vis impressoris nomen quoque nosse? Joannis Carcain nomen ei est. Ne pete plura, Vale.”[398] It was an old signboard jocularity in France to represent St John the Baptist by a monkey with cambric (_batiste_) ruffles and wristbands, (_singe en batiste_.) From the parables the sign of the GOOD SAMARITAN was borrowed, which, even at the present day, may be seen in Turner Street, Whitechapel; Grimshaw Park, Blackburn, &c. When barbers combined with their trade the practice of letting blood--otherwise than by “easy shaving,”--of drawing teeth, and setting bones, they frequently adopted this sign. In the seventeenth century, a barber-surgeon at Leeuwarden, in Holland, wrote under his device of the Good Samaritan the following poetical effusion:-- “Gelyk den Wyn, fyn, Dryft zorgen uit der herten Zoo geneest Medicyn, pyn, En ontlast van Smarten.”[399] The SAMARITAN WOMAN (_la Samaritaine_) is the French version of our JACOB’S WELL, and was a common sign in Paris; everybody knows the Bains de la Samaritaine, in which the luxurious Parisian indulges in a _fresh_ water bath in his Seine, which at that place is about as clear as the Thames at Blackwall. In the Rue Caquerel at Rouen there is a stone bas-relief of the Samaritan woman at the well, with the date 1580. Jacques Dupuy, a bookseller in the Rue St Jacques, also used the Samaritan woman as his sign, evidently because it was a subject in which he could introduce a well, and so have the satisfaction of punning on his name. This kind of pun was none the less relished for being far-fetched; thus there is a stone bas-relief in the Rue Froid, at Caen, of the MIRACULOUS DRAUGHT OF FISHES, (_la Pêche Miraculeuse_,) which, in the early part of the seventeenth century, was placed there by a bookseller of the name of Poisson, (Fish,) who, being an “odd fish,” adopted this sign as a pun on his own name. At the present day, the house is still inhabited by a bookseller of the same name and family. Christ’s Passion does not seem to have suggested any signs in England, although the great symbol of His death, the CROSS, was comparatively common. In Paris there was, in 1640, a bookseller, George Josse, in the Rue St Jacques, who had the CROWN OF THORNS (_la Couronne d’Epine_) for his sign, probably on account of the original Crown of Thorns being one of the relics kept at Paris. Coryatt’s remarks on this relic are rather amusing:--