o return to the
system of levying a tax on articles entering their gates, and the masons
continued the work of enclosing the capital again within walls.

[Illustration: GUARDS OF THE OCTROI AND THEIR DOGS IN THE ENTREPOT OF
WINES AT BERCY.

After a drawing by L. Vauzanges.]

Many difficulties attended the levying of this impost; "as soon as night
fell," says M. Maxime Du Camp, "the city was literally taken by assault;
the tavern-keepers of all the villages of the suburbs set up their
ladders against the city wall, and the casks of wine, the bottles of
brandy, butcher's meat, pork and vinegar, were lowered by means of ropes
to the confederates who were waiting for them inside, in the _chemin de
ronde_. Should some ill-advised customs clerk undertake to interfere
with these fraudulent practices, he was set upon, beaten, gagged, and
the introduction of the prohibited commodities continued undisturbed.
They did even better; they excavated tunnels, which, passing under the
exterior boulevards, under the wall of fortification, under the chemin
de ronde, opened communication between the inns of the banlieue and
those of the city; it was a veritable pillage,--the octroi was sacked."
These violent measures have been replaced in the present day by more
suitable ones, and the _musee des fraudeurs_, in the administration
centrale of the octroi, contains a very curious assemblage of objects
used in this contraband service. Alcohol was the favorite object of
smuggling, and it was carried into the city in rubber corsets, worn
under the blouse, rubber petticoats which would contain as much as
thirty litres of the liquid, and were known as _mignonnettes_, false
backs, false calves, false stomachs, and false upper arms, mostly in
zinc. The women would not hesitate to appear as _plantureuses_
wet-nurses, or as in an interesting condition; the vehicles were mined
and hollowed with concealed receptacles, and even the collars of the
harness; the blocks of granite, the rolls of carpet,--all the arts of
the smuggler were employed. That very general popular disposition to
consider the evasion of a customs duty as a trivial offence is as common
in France as elsewhere.

At all the gates of the city, in the railway stations, and at the river
entrances of the capital, the posts of the octroi are established, and
the formula of address of the green-uniformed officials is generally the
same: "You have nothing to declare?" Foreign visitors are esp