d cemetery, and for a number of
years this Marche des Innocents, with its four or five hundred immense
red parasols, under which the vendors sheltered themselves, was one of
the sights of Paris. In 1813, galleries of wood were constructed around
the enclosure for this purpose. In the centre was placed the old
fountain from the corner of the Rues Aux Fers and Saint-Denis, with the
five naiads in relief sculptured by Jean Goujon supplemented by three
more, more or less in the same style, by Pajou. Since the reconstruction
of the Halles Centrales, the Marche des Innocents has been transformed
into a public garden, surrounding this monumental fountain.

As early as 1766, the Parlement of Paris had taken up the very important
reform of suppressing all interments within the city, "a custom which
had its origin only in the growth of the city which, in extending its
limits, had gradually taken into its enclosure the cemeteries originally
outside its walls." A municipal decree, in nineteen articles, forbade
any further burials in the cemeteries then within the city walls, after
the first day of January, 1766, or in churches, chapels, or vaults,
excepting under certain limitations. This sanitary measure was, however,
so vehemently opposed by all the cures of Paris that it was never
enforced; the question of compelling all interments to take place in
suburban cemeteries was not seriously taken up till 1804, when the
grounds of Pere-Lachaise were purchased by the city, and, to this day,
the only interments that are forbidden within the built-up limits of the
capital are the temporary ones, and the common ones for the poor,--the
_fosses temporaires_, and the _fosses communes_.

[Illustration: CLOISTERS OF THE CHURCH DES INNOCENTS, SHOWING UPPER
PORTIONS CONTAINING HUMAN SKULLS, AND THE FRESCOES OF THE "DANSE
MACABRE."]

By a grotesque arrangement, the funeral arrangements in Paris were
formerly in charge of the town-criers, the _crieurs de corps et de
vins_, the _crieurs-jures_, who held a monopoly of these public
announcements, and who bawled through the streets, indifferently, the
proclamation of _choses estranges_ which were lost, mules, children,
horses, and the like, of wine to sell--when they carried a gilded
drinking-cup, and of deaths--when they wore a sort of dalmatic sown with
black "tears" and death's-heads. Their number was at first fixed at
twenty-four, then at thirty, and an edict of January, 1690, raised it to
fift