ferred to the old hotel
in the Rue Jean-Jacques-Rousseau, constructed on the site of the ancient
Hotel de Flandres. Although enlarged by successive additions, this
building never afforded sufficient facilities, and proposals to abandon
it and construct another and more ample central office elsewhere were
seriously debated from 1793 to 1811, but the Corps Legislatif was
unwilling to incur so great an expense. On the night of the 7th-8th of
August, 1880, the central office for Paris and the department of the
Seine was established in temporary quarters in the Place Carrousel, and
the demolition of the ancient building, preparatory to the construction
on its site of a much larger and more efficient one, was commenced. The
new Hotel des Postes et Telegraphes was completed four years later.

[Illustration: THE MONT-DE-PIETE: SCENE IN A BRANCH OFFICE OF THE GREAT
MUNICIPAL PAWN-SHOP.

After a drawing by Pierre Vidal.]

An ordinance of 1692 gives the details of the commencement of the
_Petite Poste_, or daily collection of letters: "there will be
established six boxes from which the letters will be gathered every day
at noon precisely and at eight o'clock in the evening in winter, and
nine o'clock in summer, so exactly that after these hours in the evening
the letters which may arrive will remain for the mail offices following,
to wit:"--and the six localities of these offices are given. In 1759, a
royal ordinance decreed the establishment in the city of different
_bureaux_ to effect the transportation from one quarter to another of
letters and small packages; and on the 1st of August this service
commenced,--there were nine distributions a day, by means of a hundred
and seventeen _facteurs_, or carriers, and the postage was required to
be paid in advance. The departure of the mail-coaches from the old
post-office in the Rue Jean-Jacques-Rousseau, at six o'clock each
morning, was a daily event of importance,--the diligence drivers prided
themselves on issuing from the cour du Meridien into the cour de
l'Horloge and from that into the street at the full gallop of their four
horses; unfortunately, the street was very narrow, and so was the
gateway of exit; it is recorded that the proprietor, named Florent, of
the shop immediately opposite this exit, which was, and still is, a
hair-dressing establishment, was enabled to retire with a fortune as the
result of the numerous reimbursements he received for his broken
shop-windows, d