in the
general administration, his suppression of abuses, he had well deserved.
"The third part of the kingdom," says a contemporary, "was opened to
cultivation in twelve years, and for one important merchant that had
been known in Paris, in Lyons, or in Rouen, there could be found fifty
under Louis XII, who made it more easy to go to Rome, to Naples, or to
London than formerly to Lyons or Geneva." In this intelligent
administration, he was greatly aided by the cardinal, Georges
d'Amboises, who "for twenty-seven years remained less his minister than
his friend," and who shared with him the well-earned approval of the
people. "_Laissez faire a Georges_" (Let George alone and he'll do it)
marked the general appreciation.

[Illustration: THE POMPEIIAN HOUSE, AVE. MONTAIGNE. BUILT IN 1866, FOR
PRINCE NAPOLEON.

DEMOLISHED IN 1892.]

That curious custom of the Middle Ages, which testifies so strongly to
the impotence and unjustness of the laws and the universal prevalence of
sudden outbreaks of passion and crime, the right of asylum, was greatly
modified in Paris by Louis XII. In the porches of the churches, or, if
they had none, within the space of thirty feet of their walls on all
sides, and in the cemeteries adjoining them, the hunted criminal was
safe. The king suppressed this privilege for the churches and convents
of Saint-Jacques-la-Boucherie, Saint-Merri, Notre-Dame, l'Hotel-Dieu,
the Abbaye Saint-Antoine, the Carmelites of the Place Maubert, and the
Grands-Augustins. Francois I extended this reform still further; his
ordinance of 1539 abolished all places of immunity for debts or other
civil matters, and decreed that any person could be apprehended
anywhere, provided that, if his place of refuge should be justified, he
should be returned to it. This, however, never was done. In 1789, there
were in Paris a few privileged localities remaining,--the royal
residences, the hotels of the ambassadors, and the hotel of the grand
prior of Malta, the Temple. By an article of the _Code de procedure
civile_, it was forbidden to arrest debtors in the buildings
consecrated to worship and during the religious exercises; and under the
Second Empire a debtor could not be arrested in the garden of the
Tuileries. With the abolishment of imprisonment for debt, these
regulations repealed themselves.

In an almost equally important matter, that of the hours of the three
meals of the day, a great change also took place during this r