The commerce of the Book was still extending from the end of the preceding century; and if the number of printers was limited and arrested by certain somewhat hard laws, production in Paris was enormous. Among regulations that weighed most heavily on publishers figured the obligation put upon them by the ordinance of 1713 to deposit eight copies of illustrated books. In 1725 the King issued other regulations to affirm the rights of the university against the corporation, forcing the masters to assist in a body at the processions of the Sorbonne and to offer on the Day of the Purification a candle to the rector. In spite of this ordinance, more religious than useful to commerce, the fashion of vignettes increased. The principal shops were searched, as they are still, for novelties; the Rue St. Jacques and the Quai des Augustins, where they were grouped, were resorted to. The most important booksellers in 1727 were Coignard, the Barbous--who essayed afterwards, with Lengley Dufresnoy, to copy the Elzevirs,--Cavalier, Robustel, Fournier, Ballard, and D'Houry. Of the two last, D'Houry printed the calendars, and Ballard had the privilege for music. Another, Leonord, published the books of the Dauphin. At these and other publishers', recent works were examined, those who did not buy gave their advice and took ideas, and so fashion slowly formed itself. It was thus that Houdart de la Motte published with G. Dupuis in 1719 a collection of fables, with illustrations of Claude Gillot, which was the talk at the booksellers'. In this book all was original: the author, who had had, five years before, the eccentric idea of translating the Iliad without knowing a word of Greek; the text, a kind of imitation of La Fontaine, without salt or savour; the size, quarto, admirably printed by Dupuis, in the Rue St. Jacques, with plates by Coypel, Massé, and, above all, the charming vignettes of Gillot, the most pleasing and clever of all his collaborators, a sort of Callot fallen into the eighteenth century, and who ought to take the first place by birthright. Gillot has been called, not without reason, "the last pagan of the Renaissance;" and this pagan had the honour to give us Watteau. [Illustration: Fig. 80.--Vignette by Gillot for the _Chien et le Chat_, fable by Houdart de la Motte, in 1719.]