Walking or driving, visitors prefer the Promenade, so far as it goes, for a thoroughfare east and west. It is not very well kept, but it is better than the main street, which one soon gets acquainted with, as it is the only continuous passage for traffic. At a central part of the street, where there is a cross entrance to the Promenade du Midi, will often be seen a mixed throng of loungers of the ouvrier and vetturini type, through which passengers have to thread their way. This place is evidently the favourite lounge for town gossip, where there is frequently something to excite critical remark in connection with the octroi. At this spot is the receipt of custom for duties on animals coming into the town for slaughter, and which must go through the preliminary ceremony of being weighed. One after the other is urged to walk on to the flat top of a steelyard, level with the ground, and scarcely distinguishable from the street. What the poor animals cannot rightly comprehend is the reason for making them stand on a particular spot and no other. Oxen—great horned beasts of a light dun colour, which have been driven from distant pasturages—are tolerably docile, and require little management. They stand stupidly with their heads bowed down, till the man in the adjoining office records their weight. Pigs—a dark-skinned race like the Hampshire brocks, but with long legs, and nearly as nimble as greyhounds—are more difficult to deal with. Disposed constitutionally to take their own way, they can by no artifice be persuaded to go or stand quietly on the machine. They move, they wriggle, they bolt. Then begins the popular merriment. The onlookers shout with laughter on seeing the abortive manœuvres of the drivers to bring their charge to a proper sense of obedience. One of the obstreperous pigs at length darts off in a state of indignation down the street, with twenty gamins full cry after it—the groups of loungers all the time frenzied with delight, and one of the _sergents de ville_, a merry personage who seems to spend his days in chatting and smoking, evidently relishes the _contre-temps_ with all his accustomed humour.