his family house in Paris, four country-houses, well supplied with furniture and agricultural implements, drinking-cups, vases, cups of silver, and cups of onyx with silver feet, valued at 100 francs or more each.  His wife had jewels, belts, purses, and trinkets, to the value of upwards of 1,000 gold francs (the gold franc was worth 24 livres); long and short gowns trimmed with fur; and three mantles of grey fur.  Guillaume de Saint-Yon had generally in his storehouses 300 ox-hides, worth 24 francs each at least; 800 measures of fat, worth 3-1/2 sols each; in his sheds, he had 800 sheep worth 100 sols each; in his safes 500 or 600 silver florins of ready money (the florin was worth 12 francs, which must be multiplied five times to estimate its value in present currency), and his household furniture was valued at 12,000 florins.  He gave a dowry of 2,000 florins to his two nieces, and spent 3,000 florins in rebuilding his Paris house; and lastly, as if he had been a noble, he used a silver seal.”

[Illustration:  Fig. 89.—­The Butcher and his Servant, drawn and engraved by J. Amman (Sixteenth Century).]

We find in the “Menagier de Paris” curious statistics respecting the various butchers’ shops of the capital, and the daily sale in each at the period referred to.  This sale, without counting the households of the King, the Queen, and the royal family, which were specially provisioned, amounted to 26,624 oxen, 162,760 sheep, 27,456 pigs, and 15,912 calves per annum; to which must be added not only the smoked and salted flesh of 200 or 300 pigs, which were sold at the fair in Holy Week, but also 6,420 sheep, 823 oxen, 832 calves, and 624 pigs, which, according to the “Menagier,” were used in the royal and princely households.

Sometimes the meat was sent to market already cut up, but the slaughter of beasts was more frequently done in the butchers’ shops in the town; for they only killed from day to day, according to the demand.  Besides the butchers’ there were tripe shops, where the feet, kidneys, &c., were sold.

[Illustration:  Figs. 90 and 91.—­Seal and Counter-Seal of the Butchers of Bruges in 1356, from an impression on green wax, preserved in the archives of that town.]

According to Bruyerin Champier, during the sixteenth century the most celebrated sheep in France were those of Berri and Limousin; and of all butchers’ meat, veal was reckoned the best.  In fact, calves intended for the tables of the upper classes were fed in a special manner:  they were allowed for six months, or even for a year, nothing but milk, which made their flesh most tender and delicate.  Contrary to the present taste, kid was more appreciated than lamb, which caused the rotisseurs frequently to attach the tail of a kid to a lamb, so as to deceive the customer and sell him a less expensive meat at the higher price.  This was the origin of the proverb which described a cheat as “a dealer in goat by halves.”