4 THE

LIGHTS OF

PARIS. 23

 

THE LIGHTS OF PARIS.

 

By IsaBeL SMITHSON.

 
 

HREE hundred and sixty years
ago there were no lights in the
streets of Paris. People who
wanted to go out in the evening
were obliged to have servants
walking before them with

torches. Those who could not afford

this carried their own lights, while the
very poor people groped along, feeling
their way by the walls and fences.

In times_of war, however, it was the
law for every citizen to put a lighted
candle in his window, and a pail of
water on his doorstep; the light, to keep
away robbers, and the water to be used
in case of fire. What
should we think nowadays,
of a large city with neither
police nor firemen !

The people of Paris did
not obey this law very
strictly ; and there is still
kept among the state
papers an old, old letter,
dated 1525, from Louisa,
the Queen-mother, in
which she announced to
Parliament that her son,

a

  
 
 
  
    
  
  
 
   

 

King Francis the First, had been taken prisoner, and
had lost eight thousand of his soldiers. This news
filled all France with grief and confusion, and Parlia-
ment, fearing riots in the capital, gave strict orders
that all the people should light their window candles
and keep in readiness their pails of water.

Thirty-three years afterwards, at about the time of
Sir Walter Raleigh’s first coming to America, a law
was passed in Paris that on account of the increasing
numbers of “ thieves, robbers and forcers of doors,”
a good light should be kept burning at the corner of
every street, from ten-o’clock at night until four in
the morning, “and where the street is so long
that the said light can not be seen from one end to
the other, there shall be another light placed in the
middle of the said street.” This law was proclaimed
throughout the city with a flourish of trumpets, but
we should have thought the lamp-posts very strange
affairs; for they were merely wooden poles with a
horizontal bar on the top of each, from which hung
an iron pot containing resin and burning tow. It was
much like the light that fishermen carry on theia
masts. Of course this made a great deal of smoke
and a strong smell of tar; but the people did not
mind that, for now they could at least see their way
about the streets at night.

In 1576, when Henry the Third was king, civil
war snuffed out the hanging lights of Paris; for in