Later along in the seventeenth century, when the court end of the town
went to the west, and the Church dignitaries found this region too far
afield, this Hotel de Sens was sold. Its new owners and tenants were
the merchants and financiers who crowded then to this quarter. They,
too, soon moved farther west, and the place had many strange
employments forced upon it. As early as 1692, the _messageries_ for
Dijon and Lyons rented it for their town head-quarters. By the middle
of the eighteenth century, the palace of the archbishops was degraded
to a livery stable and a horsedealer's lair, and the ancient arms of
Sens on its front and the escutcheons of Lorraine and Bourbon,
prelates of the Church, were covered by a great sign, "_Maison de
Roulage et de Commission_." From this court, in the words of the
advertisement of that date, "_Le Courrier de la Malle de Paris a Lyons
partit a cinq heures et demi du soir, 8 Floreal, an IV._"--which was
April 27, 1796.