e 
68 THE UNAPPRECIATED FISHER FOLK, 
march once a year ina procession, the custom of genera} 
holidays is falling into abeyance. 
It is interesting to learn that one hundred and seventy 
three years since there was a commanding fish-selling popu- 
lation in the French capital. Of oyster-women there were 
at that time no less than four thousand, and if so the sale 
of the toothsome bivalve must have been so enormous as to 
warrant speculation as to where-they all came from. It 
is not surprising with such a corps of vendors that the 
natural oyster scalps of the French coast came in time to 
be exhausted! It is almost superfluous to say that the 
Parisian fisher-wives, like their sisters all over the world, 
“enjoyed” a rather bad character, and were stigmatised as 
adepts at cheating their customers. They could, by the 
exercise of a little fizesse, deprive the ready-eating buyer 
of two or three of the best oysters out of every dozen he 
might purchase, by pretending they were bad, and kindly 
eating them for him. They used also to introduce into 
their commercial system a few empty shells, the oysters of 
which had just been sold to another customer, and, counting 
them, pretend their patron had eaten the full tale of his 
bargain. It would be unjust to omit mention in this 
chronicle of Madame Picard, a Parisian fishwife, famed for 
her wit and poetic talents, who flourished in the middle of 
the last century, and who, being frequently in their society, 
was personally known to Voltaire and other great authors 
of the day. Her poetry, if we may believe the critics of 
the period, was not devoid of genius; it was chiefly of an 
amatory and sentimental description. Her poetical works 
were published in the year 1768. Madame ultimately left 
her fish-stall to become the wife of a silk and lace mer- 
chant, in which position she was much respected. 
There is to-day a large fishing population in France, all 
