ave
seen, two hundred and ninety-five children descended from her."

In fact, the religious institutions of Paris afford much curious and
interesting information relative to the history of the bourgeoisie. For
instance, Jean Alais, who levied a tax of one denier on each basket of
fish brought to market, and thereby amassed an enormous fortune, left the
whole of it at his death for the purpose of erecting a chapel called St.
Agnes, which soon after became the church of St. Eustace. He further
directed that, by way of expiation, his body should be thrown into the
sewer which drained the offal from the market, and covered with a large
stone; this sewer up to the end of the last century was still called Pont
Alais.

[Illustration: Fig. 63.--Nicholas Flamel and Pernelle, his Wife, from a
Painting executed at the End of the Fifteenth Century, under the Vaults of
the Cemetery of the Innocents, in Paris.]

Very often when citizens made gifts during their lifetime to churches or
parishes, the donors reserved to themselves certain privileges which were
calculated to cause the motives which had actuated them to be open to
criticism. Thus, in 1304, the daughters of Nicholas Arrode, formerly
provost of the merchants, presented to the church of St.
Jacques-la-Boucherie the house and grounds which they inhabited, but one
of them reserved the right of having a key of the church that she might
go in whenever she pleased. Guillaume Haussecuel, in 1405, bought a
similar right for the sum of eighteen _sols parisis_ per annum (equal to
twenty-five francs); and Alain and his wife, whose house was close to two
chapels of the church, undertook not to build so as in any way to shut out
the light from one of the chapels on condition that they might open a
small window into the chapel, and so be enabled to hear the service
without leaving their room.

[Illustration: Fig. 64.--Country Life--Fac-simile of a Woodcut in a folio
Edition of Virgil, published at Lyons in 1517.]

We thus see that the bourgeoisie, especially of Paris, gradually took a
more prominent position in history, and became so grasping after power
that it ventured, at a period which does not concern us here, to aspire to
every sort of distinction, and to secure an important social standing.
What had been the exception during the sixteenth century became the rule
two centuries later.

We will now take a glance at the agricultural population (Fig. 64), who,
as we have already