tapestries soon threw into the shade the reputation of the tapestries of Flanders; Venice had to yield up her secrets and her workmen for the glass manufactories of St. Gobain and Tourlaville.  The great lords and ladies were obliged to give up the Venetian point with which their dresses had been trimmed; the importation of it was forbidden, and lace manufactories were everywhere established in France; there was even a strike amongst the women at Alencon against the new lace which it was desired to force them to make.  “There are more than eighty thousand persons working at lace in Alencon, Seez, Argentan, Falaise, and the circumjacent parishes,” said a letter to Colbert from the superintendent of Alencon, “and I can assure you, my lord, that it is manna and a blessing from heaven over all this district, where even little children of seven years of age find means of earning a livelihood; the little shepherd-girls from the fields work, like the rest, at it; they say that they will never be able to make such fine point as this, and that one wants to take away their bread and their means of paying their talliage.”  Point d’Alencon won the battle, and the making of lace spread all over Normandy.  Manufactures of soap, tin, arms, silk, gave work to a multitude of laborers; the home trade of France at the same time received development; the bad state of the roads was “a dreadful hinderance to traffic;” Colbert ordered them to be every where improved.  “The superintendents have done wonders, and we are never tired of singing their praises,” writes, Madame de Sevigne to her daughter during one of her trips; “it is quite extraordinary what beautiful roads there are; there is not a single moment’s stoppage; there are malls and walks everywhere.”  The magnificent canal of Languedoc, due to the generous initiative of Riquet, united the Ocean to the Mediterranean; the canal of Orleans completed the canal of Briare, commenced by Henry IV.  The inland custom-houses which shackled the traffic between province and province were suppressed at divers points; many provinces demurred to the admission of this innovation, declaring that, to set their affairs right, “there was need of nothing but order, order, order.”  Colbert also wanted order, but his views were higher and broader than those of Breton or Gascon merchants; in spite of his desire to “put the kingdom in a position to do without having recourse to foreigners for things necessary for the use and comfort of the French,” he had too lofty and too judicious a mind to neglect the extension of trade; like Richelieu, he was for founding great trading companies; he had five, for the East and West Indies, the Levant, the North, and Africa; just as with Richelieu, they were with difficulty established, and lasted but a little while; it was necessary to levy subscriptions on the members of the sovereign corporations; “M. de Bercy put down his name for a thousand livres,” says the journal of Oliver d’Ormesson.