Notwithstanding these innovations, the majority of the old objects still survive, in name at least, on the signboards of alehouses and taverns. Their use may still be regarded as a rule with publicans and innkeepers, although they have become the exception in other trades. Occasionally, also, we may still come upon a painted signboard, but these are daily becoming scarcer. Not so in France; there the good old tradition of the painted signboard is yet kept up. We get a good glimpse of this subject in the following:[42]--“But it is the signs that so amuse and absolutely arrest a stranger. This is a practice that has grown into a mania at Paris, and is even a subject for the ridicule of the stage, since many a shopkeeper considers his sign as a primary matter, and spends a little capital in this one outfit. Many of them exhibit figures as large as life, painted in no humble or shabby style; while history, sacred and classical, religion, the stage, &c., furnish subjects. You may see the _Horatii_ and _Curiatii_--a scene from the ‘Fourberies de Scapin’ of Molière--a group of French soldiers, with the inscription, _A la Valeur des Soldats Français_, or a group of children inscribed _à la réunion des Bons Enfants_,[43]--or _à la Baigneuse_, depicting a beautiful nymph just issuing from the bath; or _à la Somnambule_, a pretty girl walking in her sleep and nightdress, and followed by her gallant.[44] “In ludicrous things, a barber will write under his sign:-- ‘La Nature donne barbe et cheveux, Et moi, je les coupe tous les deux.’[45] ‘A toutes les figures dédiant mes rasoirs, Je nargue la censure des fidèles miroirs.’[46] “Also a frequent inscription with a barber is, ‘Ici on rajeunit.’ A breeches-maker writes up, _M----, Culottier de Mme. la Duchesse de Devonshire_. A _perruquier_ exhibits a sign, very well painted, of an old fop trying on a new wig, entitled, _Au ci-devant jeune homme_. A butcher displays a bouquet of faded flowers, with this inscription, _Au tendre Souvenir_. An eating-house exhibits a punning sign, with an ox dressed up with bonnet, lace veil, shawl, &c., which naturally implies, _Bœuf à-la-mode_. A pastry-cook has a very pretty little girl climbing up to reach some cakes in a cupboard, and this sign he calls, _A la petite Gourmande_. A stocking-maker has painted for him a lovely creature, trying on a new stocking, at the same time exhibiting more charms than the occasion requires to the young fellow who is on his knees at her feet, with the very significant motto, _A la belle occasion_.”[47]