river serve as a natural
drain for rain-water and household refuse. The great works that the
"merchants' provosts" did in this direction are fast disappearing.
Middle-aged persons alone can remember to have seen the great holes in
the rue Montmartre, rue du Temple, etc., down which the waters poured.
Those terrible open jaws were in the olden time of immense benefit to
Paris. Their place will probably be forever marked by the sudden rise
of the paved roadways at the spots where they opened,--another
archaeological detail which will be quite inexplicable to the historian
two centuries hence. One day, about 1816, a little girl who was carrying
a case of diamonds to an actress at the Ambigu, for her part as queen,
was overtaken by a shower and so nearly washed down the great drainhole
in the rue du Temple that she would have disappeared had it not been for
a passer who heard her cries. Unluckily, she had let go the diamonds,
which were, however, recovered later at a man-hole. This event made a
great noise, and gave rise to many petitions against these engulfers of
water and little girls. They were singular constructions about five feet
high, furnished with iron railings, more or less movable, which
often caused the inundation of the neighboring cellars, whenever the
artificial river produced by sudden rains was arrested in its course by
the filth and refuse collected about these railings, which the owners of
the abutting houses sometimes forgot to open.

The front of this shop of the Sieur Lecamus was all window, formed of
sashes of leaded panes, which made the interior very dark. The furs were
taken for selection to the houses of rich customers. As for those who
came to the shop to buy, the goods were shown to them outside, between
the pillars,--the arcade being, let us remark, encumbered during the
day-time with tables, and clerks sitting on stools, such as we all
remember seeing some fifteen years ago under the "piliers des Halles."
From these outposts, the clerks and apprentices talked, questioned,
answered each other, and called to the passers,--customs which the great
Walter Scott has made use of in his "Fortunes of Nigel."

The sign, which represented an ermine, hung outside, as we still see in
some village hostelries, from a rich bracket of gilded iron filagree.
Above the ermine, on one side of the sign, were the words:--

LECAMVS

FURRIER

TO MADAME LA ROYNE ET DU ROY NOSTRE