[Illustration: Fig. 88.--The Holy Ox.--Celtic Monument found in Paris
under the Choir of Notre-Dame in 1711, and preserved in the Musee de Cluny
et des Thermes.]
Although bound, at all events with their money, to follow the calling of
their fathers, we find many descendants of ancient butchers' families of
Paris, in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries, abandoning their stalls
to fill high places in the state, and even at court. It must not be
concluded that the rich butchers in those days occupied themselves with
the minor details of their trade; the greater number employed servants who
cut up and retailed the meat, and they themselves simply kept the
accounts, and were engaged in dealing through factors or foremen for the
purchase of beasts for their stalls (Fig. 89). One can form an opinion of
the wealth of some of these tradesmen by reading the enumeration made by
an old chronicler of the property and income of Guillaume de Saint-Yon,
one of the principal master butchers in 1370. "He was proprietor of three
stalls, in which meat was weekly sold to the amount of 200 _livres
parisis_ (the livre being equivalent to 24 francs at least), with an
average profit of ten to fifteen per cent.; he had an income of 600
_livres parisis_; he possessed besides 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."
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