seized under
distress, one treasurer and paymaster, three controllers, one physician,
two surgeons, two apothecaries, one matron, one receiver of fines, one
inspector of estates, several keepers of refreshment establishments, who
resided within the precincts of the palace, sixty or eighty notaries, four
or five hundred advocates, two hundred attorneys, besides registers and
deputy registers. Down to the reign of Charles VI. (1380--1422) members of
Parliament held their appointment by commissions granted by the King, and
renewed eaeh session. From Charles VI. to Francis I. these appointments
became royal charges; but from that time, owing to the office being so
often prostituted for reward, it got more and more into disrepute.

[Illustration: Fig. 312.--Judge.--From a Drawing in "Proverbes, Adages,
&c.," Manuscript of the Fifteenth Century, in the Imperial Library of
Paris.]

Louis XI. made the office of member of the Parliament of Paris a
permanent one, and Francis I. continued this privilege. In 1580 the
supreme magistracy poured 140,000,000 francs, which now would be worth
fifteen or twenty times as much, into the State treasury, so as to enable
members to sit permanently _sur les fleurs de lis_, and to obtain
hereditary privileges. The hereditary transmission of office from father
to son dealt a heavy blow at the popularity of the parliamentary body,
which had already deeply suffered through shameful abuses, the enormity of
the fees, the ignorance of some of the members, and the dissolute habits
of many others.

[Illustration: Fig. 313.--Lawyer.--From the "Danse des Morts" of Basle,
engraved by Merian: in 4to, Frankfort, 1596.]

[Illustration: Fig. 314.--Barrister.--From a Woodout in the "Danse
Macabre:" Guyot's edition, 1490.]

[Illustration: Fig. 315.--Assembly of the Provostship of the Merchants of
Paris.--Fac-simile of a Woodcut in "Ordonnances Royaux de la Jurisdiction
de la Prevote des Marchands et Eschevinage de la Ville de Paris:" in small
folio, goth. edition of Paris, Jacques Nyverd, 1528.]

The Chatelet, on the contrary, was less involved in intrigue, less
occupied with politics, and was daily engaged in adjudicating in cases of
litigation, and thus it rendered innumerable services in promoting the
public welfare, and maintained, and even increased, the respect which it
had enjoyed from the commencement of its existence. In 1498, Louis XII.
required that the provost should possess the title of doctor