than his legal fare, and M. Juge forwarded his complaint to the prefecture of police the next day.  Collignon was condemned to make restitution in person to M. Juge.  He sold his furniture, purchased a pair of pistols and went on the appointed day to the house of M. Juge in the Rue d’Enfer.  No hard words passed between them, but while the gentleman was in the act of signing the receipt the coachman drew out one of his pistols and shot him through the head, killing him instantly.  Collignon was at once arrested:  he was tried and condemned to death, and expiated his crime on the scaffold on the 6th of December following.  Since that event another system of restitution has been followed, the sum exacted in excess of the legal fare being deposited at the prefecture of police, whither the traveler is compelled to go in quest of it.

At the prefecture of police is likewise situated the storehouse of articles forgotten or left behind in public carriages.  According to the law, every coachman is commanded to inspect carefully his carriage after the occupant has departed, and to deposit every article left therein, were it but an odd glove, in the storehouse above mentioned.  Each object is inscribed in a register and bears a particular number, and the number of the cab in which it was left as well.  These articles fill a large room, whereof the contents are ever changing, and which is always full.  Umbrellas, muffs, opera-glasses, pocket-books (sometimes containing thousands of francs) are among the most usual deposits.  In one year there were found in the cabs of Paris over twenty thousand objects, among which were six thousand five hundred umbrellas.  Should the article bear the address of the owner, he is at once apprised by letter of its whereabouts; otherwise, it is kept till called for, and if never claimed it becomes the property of the city at the end of three years, and is sold at auction.  A vast row of underground apartments is appropriated to the unclaimed articles—­dim cellar-rooms, lighted with gas.  There may be seen umbrellas by the hundred or the thousand, strapped together in bundles and stacked up like fagots.  Everything is registered, numbered and catalogued, and if returned to the owner his address and the date of delivery are carefully noted.  The strict surveillance of the police contributes greatly toward keeping the Parisian cabman honest.  Instances are on record where costly sets of jewels, bags of napoleons and pocket-books crammed with bank-notes have been faithfully deposited at the prefecture by their finders.  On the other hand, an anecdote is told of a cab-driver in whose vehicle a gentleman chanced to leave his pocket-book, containing fifty thousand francs which he had just won at play.  He traced his cabman to the stable, where he was in the act of feeding his horse, opened the carriage-door, and found his pocket-book lying untouched upon the floor.  On learning what a prize he had missed the coachman incontinently hung himself.