habits of the primitive brotherhood had long
been forgotten; but, under the Regent Orleans,
there existed a Grand Prior of the Knights of
Malta, who did his best to make the excesses
of the Temple vie with the orgies of the Palais
Royal. This was Philippe de Vendôme, a
royal prince, and worthily allied by blood to
the dissolute Regent. In his time the suppers
at the Temple were, with all their license,
considered the pleasantest in Paris, owing to the
wit and social qualities of the guests whom
the Grand Prior collected round him. La
Fare shone there in all the brilliancy of his
wit and gaiety; Chaulieu, who inhabited a
house in the enclosure,—having most likely
excellent reasons for doing so,—was the
habitual companion of M. de Vendôme, and at
eighty years of age sang, like Anacreon, the
joys of love and wine; Mademoiselle de Launay
did not withhold her charms and her clever
repartees; and the name of Baptiste Rousseau
is to be found on the convivial list. His
name recals that of the more celebrated Jean
Jacques, who, fifty years afterwards, when
the Prince de Conti was Grand Prior of the
Knights of Malta, sought protection in the
Temple from his political enemies, and from
those which were conjured up by his own
sombre imagination. It is said that the
right of asylum in the Temple lasted until the
revolution. It was a privilege which a French
nobleman of that time would not willingly
part with, on account of the large revenue it
brought to the Grand Prior,—the houses in
the enclosure letting at a much higher price
than the best hotels in Paris, The tenants of
these abodes kept carefully within the
precincts of the sanctuary during six days of the
week, for fear of capture from the numerous
officers of justice who were constantly on the
watch; but the Sabbath was free to them to
issue forth, as the Sunday of Queen's Bench
"rulers." Of the imprisonment of Louis the
Sixteenth and his unfortunate family in the
tower of the Temple, it is unnecessary for me
to speak; but of other celebrated persons
who were confined there I may mention the
names of Sir Sidney Smith, who escaped from
it; of Toussaint Louverture, who was only
removed to die in the fort of Joux; and of
Pichegru and Captain Wright, both of whom
committed suicide within its walls. The Order
of the Knights of Malta was suppressed in
seventeen hundred and ninety, and the tower
itself was demolished in eighteen hundred
and eleven, having stood just long enough to
witness the most singular transformation that
ever befel a monkish colony.

In the year eighteen hundred and nine, in
conformity with previous ordinances decreeing
the same, on the site of the splendid palace of
the Knights of Malta the first stone was laid
of an immense market for the sale of old
clothes, rags, apparel of the cheapest kind,
and all those nondescript articles, tattered,
battered, musty, rusty, worn-out and used-up,
which in London are conglomerated in
dealers' shops under the name of marine
stores! The ground which constituted the
enclosure of the Temple was conceded to
the city of Paris for this purpose—and this
only—("ne pourra être consacré à aucun autre
usage") for the space of ninety-nine years, at
an annual fixed rental, and, by a decree dated
from the imperial camp of Osterade, and
signed by Napoleon the First, it was ordained
that upon the space above indicated there
should be constructed a covered market,
consisting of eighteen hundred and eighty-eight
stalls for shops, divided into two series of
nine hundred and fourty-four each. When I
say that every one of these stalls, and a host
of subsidiary establishments round about, are
devoted entirely to the sale of chiffons, you
may imagine the briskness of the trade of
Paris Rag Fair!

Take any avenue you please—there are
plenty for choice—and you see at once the
nature of the traffic that is carried on. To
economise space, the stalls are grouped in
blocks of four each, two side by side being
backed by two more similarly placed, and
having a passage all round them which admits
of two persons walking abreast, to survey at
leisure the various wares displayed. The
main avenues are rather wider, and unless
your object be special, it is sufficient for ordinary
purposes to perambulate these. " Qu'
est-ce que vous désirez, monsieur?" or
"madame," as the case may be (What d'ye
lack?), greet you at every step. You are a
stranger, well-dressed, and it might be
supposed are there only from motives of curiosity;
but the boutiquières, or noguettes, as they
used to be termed (they are chiefly women),
understand nothing of the sort—in that place
—and urge you to buy the most unnecessary
things. You have nothing to do, they tell
you, but to "regulate your choice,"—a thing
more easily said than done, particularly
when you have no idea of buying anything.
If ever the embarras des richesses existed
anywhere, it is in the Halle au Vieux-Linge.
Let me, as well as my memory will permit,
describe a few of the objects which are there
arranged.

Bonnets of all sorts, of every size, shape,
material, and colour; in the oldest style, of
which there can be no doubt; in the newest
fashion, which you may hesitate to believe,
though the assurance of the fact is most
positive. Dangling beside them, from hooks
in the framework of the stall, are the substitutes
and congeners of bonnets: caps of lace,
net, muslin, cambric, and cotton, for day or
night wear, and what ladies call cap-fronts,
things which bear the same relation to caps
that collars do to shirts, only they are much
more ornamental, and rival the rainbow in
variety of hue. On one side, on a counter, lie
heaps of soiled and faded artificial flowers,
from out of which a pair of busy hands select
the cleanest and least damaged, and by dint
of wire and thread, weave them again into