The Pont-neuf is one hundred toises in length and twelve in breadth.[19]
The cupola of the Halle au Bled, or corn and flour market, is one hundred and twenty feet in diameter; it forms a perfect half circle, whose centre is on a level with the cornice, forty feet from the ground. The vault or dome is composed merely of deal boards, four feet long, one foot broad and an inch thick.[20]
Describing the church of St. John of the Minstrels, so called, because it was founded by a couple of fidlers, in 1330. M. du Laure says, "Among the figures of saints with which the great door is decorated, one is distinguished who would play very well on the fiddle, if his fiddle-stick were not broken."
There is a parcel-post as well as a letter penny-post in Paris.
The salary of the executioner was eighteen thousand livres per annum;[21]
his office was to break criminals on the wheel, and to inflict
every punishment on them which they were sentenced to undergo.
There are no longer any Espions de Police, or spies, employed by government. "That army of thieves, of cut-throats, and rascals, kept in pay by the ancient police, was perhaps a necessary evil in the midst of the general evil of our old administration. A body of rogues and traitors could be protected by no other administration than such a one as could only subsist by crimes and perfidy. Those were the odious resources of despotism. Liberty ought to make use of simple and open means, which justice and morality will never disavow."
There is a school at the point of the isle of St. Louis, in the river Seine, to teach swimming; persons who chuse to learn in private pay four louis, those who swim among others, half that sum, or half-crown a lesson; if they are not perfect in that art in a season, (five summer months) they may attend the following season gratis.
DRESS. INNS.
THE common people are in general much better clothed than they were before the Revolution, which may be ascribed to their not being so grievously taxed as they were. An English Gentleman who has gone for many years annually from Calais to Paris, remarks, that they are almost as well dressed on working days at present, as they were on Sundays and holidays formerly.