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linkmen were associated with authority in Paris, they were, according to William Sidney, akin to thieves in London. To engage a torchbearer there, he insisted, "was an undertaking attended with considerable risk: far more often than not these 'servants of the public' were hand in glove with footpads and highwaymen, and would rarely think twice on receiving a signal from such accomplices of extinguishing the link and slipping away, leaving the terrified fare or fares, as the case may be, to their tender mercies."
    Still, the linkmen and linkboys did a brisk business among the well-to-do, who dined out and attended performances and plays. In earlier times, theatrical productions had been staged during the afternoon in the open air or in theaters with large windows or open roofs, and sounds often had to suggest changes in daylight: a cock's crow stood for sunrise, an owl's hoot for night. Now, in evening performances in enclosed theaters, the control of darkness onstage could hide some of the ropes and supports, as well as changes of scenery. Artificial light suggested natural light, and also emotion. In sixteenth-century Italy, it was "a custom, both in ancient and modern times, to light bonfires and torches in the streets, on the housetops, and on towers as a sign of joy; and hence arises this theatrical convention—the imitating of such festive occasions. The lights are put there for no other purpose but to imitate ... this mood of gaiety."
    The candles and lanterns employed as footlights and spotlights, and the
bozze
—candles backed by burnished metal disks and fronted by glass globes filled with tinted water—allowed for a variety of effects. But their presence also meant the illusion had to be ruptured now and again. "Until he himself was snuffed out by the universal employment of gas," wrote one theater historian, "the candlesnuffer had perforce to obtrude himself in the midst of the traffic of the scene to fulfil his humble office. Guttering tallow dips called for immediate attention.... When the stage lights began to flare or flicker out the gods commonly set up a cry of 'Snuffers! Snuffers!'"

    Sometimes the night city itself could seem like a vast public interior walled in by the dark of the countryside beyond. On a clear evening in eighteenth-century Vienna, one observer noted, "These beautiful lights are laid out so prettily that if one looks down a straight lane ... it is like seeing a splendid theater or a most gracefully illuminated stage."
    Of course, the longer night hours weren't for everyone. The advantages of streetlights went mostly to the young and the wealthy. Many ordinary workers, obligated to rise with the sun, were unable to truly enjoy the extension of the day that streetlights brought. "Night falls," Mercier wrote, "and, while scene-shifters set to work at the playhouses, swarms of other workmen, carpenters, masons and the like make their way towards the poorer quarters. They leave white footprints from the plaster on their shoes, a trail that any eye can follow. They are off home, and to bed, at the hour which finds elegant ladies sitting down to their dressing-tables to prepare for the business of the night." And although ordinary citizens were no longer required to supply sill lights, they felt resentment still, since they were taxed for them.
    In time, those tax dollars paid for improved lighting. Artist Jan van der Heyden developed streetlights for the city of Amsterdam in which currents of air washed over the interior glass of the lanterns and kept soot from accumulating. By the mid-eighteenth century, the simple lanterns on the streets of Paris that hung from cables strung across the way were replaced with
réverbères,
oil lanterns with double wicks and two reflectors to augment the brightness of the flame: one reflector above the flame to direct the light downward, another concave reflector beside the flame to direct the light outward. "In the old days, eight thousand