held at Sainte-Anne d’Auray, all the subjects of the Grand Coesre were present, and paid homage to their lord and master.  Some came and paid him the tribute which was required of them by the statutes of the craft; others rendered him an account of what they had done, and what they had earned during the year.  When they had executed their work badly, he ordered them to be punished, either corporally or pecuniarily, according to the gravity of their offences.  When he had not himself properly governed his people, he was dethroned, and a successor was appointed by acclamation.

[Illustration:  Fig. 380.—­Beggar playing the Fiddle, and his Wife accompanying him with the Bones.—­From an old Engraving of the Seventeenth Century.]

At these assemblies, as well as in the Cours des Miracles, French was not spoken, but a strange and artificial language was used called jargon, langue matoise, narquois, &c.  This language, which is still in use under the name of argot, or slang, had for the most part been borrowed from the jargon or slang of the lower orders.  To a considerable extent, according to the learned philologist of this mysterious language, M. Francisque Michel, it was composed of French words lengthened or abbreviated; of proverbial expressions; of words expressing the symbols of things instead of the things themselves; of terms either intentionally or unintentionally altered from their true meaning; and of words which resembled other words in sound, but which had not the same signification.  Thus, for mouth, they said pantiere, from pain (bread), which they put into it; the arms were lyans (binders); an ox was a cornant (horned); a purse, a fouille, or fouillouse; a cock, a horloge, or timepiece; the legs, des quilles (nine-pins); a sou, a rond, or round thing; the eyes, des luisants (sparklers), &c.  In jargon several words were also taken from the ancient language of the gipsies, which testifies to the part which these vagabonds played in the formation of the Argotic community.  For example, a shirt was called lime; a chambermaid, limogere; sheets, limans—­words all derived from the gipsy word lima, a shirt:  they called an ecu, a rusquin or rougesme, from rujia, the common word for money; a rich man, rupin; a house, turne; a knife, chourin, from rup, turna, and chori, which, in the gipsy tongue, mean respectively silver, castle, and knife.

From what we have related about rogues and the Cours des Miracles, one might perhaps be tempted to suppose that France was specially privileged; but it was not so, for Italy was far worse in this respect.  The rogues were called by the Italians bianti, or ceretani, and were subdivided into more than forty classes, the various characteristics of which have been described by a certain Rafael Frianoro.