The Project Gutenberg eBook of Historic Paris, by Jetta S. Wolff.

LA TOUR DE L’HORLOGE, LES “TOURS POINTUES”
DE LA CONCIERGERIE ET LE MARCHÉ AUX FLEURS

[Frontispiece

HISTORIC PARIS

BY JETTA S. WOLFF
WITH FIFTY-NINE ILLUSTRATIONS

LONDON
JOHN LANE THE BODLEY HEAD LIMITED
NEW YORK: JOHN LANE COMPANY MCMXXI

PREFACE

THIS book, begun many years ago, was laid aside under the stress of other work, which did not, however, hinder the sedulous amassing of notes during my long and continuous residence in Paris. The appearance of the Marquis de Rochegude’s exhaustive work, on somewhat the same lines in a more extensive compass, took me by surprise, and I thought for a moment that it would render my book superfluous. The vast concourse of English-speaking people brought hither by the great war, people keen to learn the history of the beautiful old buildings they find here on every side, made me understand that an English book of relatively small compass was needed, and I set to work to finish the volume planned and begun so long ago.

I had made the personal acquaintance and consequent notes of most of the ancient “Stones of Paris” before looking up published notes concerning them. When such notes were looked up, I can only say their sources were far too numerous and too scattered to be recorded here. I must beg every one who may have published anything worth while on Old Paris to receive my thanks, for I have doubtless read their writings with interest and benefit. But I must offer special thanks to M. de Rochegude, for—writing under pressure to get the book ready for press—his work as a reference book, while pursuing my own investigations, has been invaluable.

To my readers I would say peruse what I have written, but use your own eyes, your own keen observation for learning much more than could be noted here. Look into every courtyard in the ancient quarters, look attentively at every dwelling along the old winding streets, and fail not to look up to their roofs. The roofs are never alike. They are strikingly picturesque. Old world builders did not work mechanically, did not raise streets in machine-like style, each structure exactly like its neighbour, one street barely distinguishable from the street running parallel or crossing it, according to the habit of to-day. The builders of les jours d’antan loved their craft; every single house gave scope for some artistic trait. The roofs offered a fine field for architectural ingenuity: wonderfully planned windows, chimneys, balconies, gables are to be seen on the roofs often in most unexpected corners, in every part of the Vieux Paris. Look up!—I cannot urge this too strongly. And within every old hôtel—the French term for private house or mansion—examine each staircase. In the erection of a staircase the architect of past ages found grand scope for graceful lines, and exquisite workmanship. Thus walks even through the dimmest corners of la Ville Lumière will be for lovers of old-time vestiges a joy for ever.

This was an iconoclastic age even before the destructiveness of the awful war just over. Precious architectural and historical relics were swept away to make room for brand-new buildings. As it has been impossible during the past months to verify in every instance the up-to-date accuracy of notes made previously, it is probable that some old structures referred to in these pages as still standing may no longer be found on the spot indicated. But whether in such cases their site be now an empty space, or occupied by newly built walls, it cannot fail to be interesting as the site where a vanished historic structure stood erewhile.

ILLUSTRATIONS

[Some illustrations have been moved from within paragraphs for ease of reading. (note of e-text transcriber.)]

HISTORIC PARIS

CHAPTER I

THREE PALACES

THE LOUVRE

THE Louvre has existed on the selfsame site from the earliest days of the history of Paris and of France. It began as a rough hunting-lodge, erected in the time of the rois fainéants—the “do-nothing” kings: a primitive hut-like construction in the dark wolf-haunted forest to the north of the settlement on the islets of the Seine, called Leutekia, the city of mud, on account of its marshy situation, or Loutouchezi, the watery city, by its Gallic settlers, by the Romans Lutetia Parisiorum—the Paris of that long-gone age. The name Louvre, therefore, may possibly be derived from the Latin Word lupus, a wolf. More probably its origin is the old word leouare, whence lower, louvre: a habitation.

Lutetia grew in importance, and the royal hunting-lodge in its vicinity was made into a fortress. The city of mud was soon known by the tribe name only, Parisii-Paris, and the Louvre, freed from surrounding forest trees, came within the city bounds. It was gradually enlarged and strengthened. A white circle in the big court shows the site of the famous gate between two Grosses Tours built in the time of the warrior-king Philippe-Auguste. Twelve towers of smaller dimensions were added by Charles V. Each tower had its own special battalion of soldiers. The inner chambers of each had their special use. In the Tour du Trésor, the King kept his money and portable objects of great value. In the Tour de la Bibliothèque were stored the books of those days, first collected by King Charles V, and which formed the nucleus of the National Library. Charles V made many other additions and adornments, and the first clocks known in France were placed in the Louvre in the year 1370. About the same time a primitive stove—a chauffe-poële—was first put up there. The grounds surrounding the fortress were laid out with care, the chief garden stretching towards the north. A menagerie was built and peopled; nightingales sang in the groves. The palace became a sumptuous residence. Sovereigns from foreign lands were received by the Kings of France with great pomp in “Notre Chastel du Louvre, où nous nous tenons le plus souvent quand nous sommes en notre ville de Paris.”

The Louvre was the scene of two of the most important political events of the fourteenth century. In the year 1303, when Philippe-le-Bel was King, the second meeting of that imposing assembly of barons, prelates and lesser magnates of the realm which formed, as a matter of fact, the first états généraux took place there. In 1358, at the time of the rising known as the Jacquerie, Étienne Marcel, Prévôt des Marchands, made the Louvre his headquarters. In the fourteenth century a King of England held his court there: Henry V, victorious after Agincourt, kept Christmas in great state in Paris at the Louvre.

The royal palaces of those days, like great abbeys, were fitted with everything that was needed for their upkeep and the sustenance of their staff. Workmen, materials, provisions were at hand, all on the premises. A farm, a Court of Justice, a prison were among the most essential elements of palace buildings and domains. Yet the Louvre with its prestige and its immense accommodation was never inhabited continuously by the Kings of France, and in the sixteenth century the Palace was so completely abandoned as to be on the verge of ruin. Then François I, looking forward to the state visit of the Emperor Charles-Quint, sent workmen in haste and in vast numbers to the Louvre, to repair and enlarge. Pierre Lescot, the most distinguished architect of the day, took the great task in hand. The Grosse Tour had already been razed to the ground. The ancient walls to the south and west were now knocked down. One wall of the Salle des Cariatides, and the steps leading from the underground parts of the palace to the ground floor, are all that remain of the Louvre of Philippe-Auguste.

It is from this sixteenth-century restoration that the Old Louvre as we know it dates in its chief lines. Much of the work of decoration was done by Jean Goujon and by Paul Pouce, a pupil of Michael Angelo. But the Louvre nevermore stood still. Thenceforward each successive sovereign, at some period of his reign, took the palace in hand to beautify, rebuild or enlarge—sometimes, however, getting little beyond the designing of plans. Richelieu, that arch-conceiver of plans, architectural as well as political, would fain have enlarged the old palace on a very vast scale. His King, Louis XIII, laid the first stone of the Tour de l’Horloge. As soon as the wars of the Fronde were over, Louis XIV, the greatest builder of that and succeeding ages, determined to enlarge in his own grand way. An Italian architect of repute was summoned from Italy; but he and Louis did not agree, and the Italian went back to his own land.

The grand Colonnade, on the side facing the old church, St-Germain-l’Auxerrois, was built between the years 1667-80 by Claude Perrault. The façade facing the quay to the south was then added. After the death of the King’s active statesman, Colbert, work at the Louvre stopped. The fine palace fell from its high estate. It may almost be said to have been let out in tenements. Artists, savants, men of letters, took rooms there—logements! The Louvre was, as a matter of fact, no longer a royal palace. Its “decease” as a king’s residence dates from the death of Colbert. The Colonnade was restored in 1755 by the renowned architect, Gabriel, and King Louis XVI first put forward the proposition of using the palace as a great National Museum. It was the King’s wish that all the best-known, most highly valued works of art in France should be collected, added to the treasures of the Cabinet du Roi, and placed there. The Revolutionary Government put into effect the guillotined King’s idea. The names of its members may be read inscribed on two black marble slabs up against the wall of the circular ante-chamber leading to the Galerie d’Apollon, where are preserved and shown the ancient crown jewels of France, the beautiful enamels of Limoges and many other precious treasures once the possession of royalty. This grand gallery, planned and begun by Lebrun in the seventeenth century, is modern, built in the nineteenth century by Duban.

The First Empire saw the completion of the work begun by the Revolutionists. In the time of Napoléon I the marvellous collection of pictures, statuary, art treasures of every description, was duly arranged and classified. The building of the interior court was finished in 1813.

On the establishment of the Second Empire, Napoléon III set himself the task of completely restoring the Louvre and extending it. The Pavillon de Flore was then rebuilt, joining the ancient palace with the Tuileries, which for two previous centuries had been the habitation of French monarchs.

After the disasters of 1870-71 restoration was again undertaken, but though the Tuileries had been burnt to the ground the Louvre had suffered comparatively little damage.

Within its walls the Louvre has undergone drastic changes since its conversion from a royal palace to a National Museum. The Salle des Fêtes of bygone ages has become the Salle Lacaze with its fine collection of masterpieces. What was once the King’s Cabinet, communicating with the south wing, where in her time Marie de’ Medici had her private rooms, is known as the Salle des Sept Cheminées, filled with examples of early nineteenth-century French art.

In the Salle Carrée, where Henri IV was married, and where the murderers of President Brisson met their fate by hanging—swung from the beams of the ceiling now finely vaulted—masterpieces of all the grandest epochs in art are brought together; from among them disappeared in 1911 the now regained Mona Lisa. Painting, sculpture, works of art of every kind, every age and every nation fill the great halls and galleries of the Louvre. We cannot attempt a description of its treasures here. Let all who love things of beauty, all who take pleasure in learning the wonderful results of patient work, go and see [A].

Nor can I recount here the numberless incidents, the historic happenings of which the Louvre was the scene. It is customary to point out the gilded balcony from which Charles IX is popularly supposed to have fired upon the Huguenots, or to have given the signal to fire, on that fatal night of St-Bartholemew, 1572. But the balcony was not yet there. Nor is it probable the young King fired from any other balcony or window. Shots were fired maybe from the palace by men less timorous.

On the Seine side of the big court is the site of the ancient Gothic Porte Bourbon, where Admiral Coligny was first struck and Concini shot through the heart. In our own time we have the startling theft of the Joconde from the Salle Carrée, its astonishing return, and the hiding away of the treasures in the days of war, of air-raids and long-range guns and threatened invasion, to strike our imagination. “The great black mass,” which the enemy aviator saw on approaching Paris, and knew it must be the Louvre, grand, majestic, undisturbed, is the most notable monument of Paris and of France.

THE TUILERIES

The Palace has gone, burnt to the ground in the war year 1870-71. The gardens alone remain, those beautiful Tuileries gardens, the brightest spot on the right bank of the Seine. Several moss-grown pillars, some remnants of broken arches, the pillars and frontal of the present Jeu de Paume and of the Orangery, are all that is left to-day of the royal dwelling that erewhile stood there. The palace was built at the end of the sixteenth century by Catherine de’ Medici to replace the ancient palace Les Tournelles, in the Place Royale, now Place des Vosges, where King Henri II had died at a festive tournament, his eye and brain pierced by the sword of his great general, Comte de Montmorency. Queen Catherine hated the sight of the palace where her husband had died thus tragically. Its destruction was decreed; and the Queen commanded the erection in its stead of the magnifique bâtiment de l’Hôtel royal, dit des Tuileries des Parisiens, parcequ’il y avait autrefois une Tuilerie au dit lieu.

The site of that big tile-yard was in those days outside the city boundary. The architect, Philibert Delorme, set to work with great ardour. A rough road was made leading from the bac, i.e. the ford across the Seine, now spanned near the spot by the Pont Royal, to the quarries in the neighbourhood of Notre-Dame-des-Champs and Vaugirard, whence stone was brought. Thus was born the well-known Rue du Bac. The palace was from the first surrounded by a fine garden, separated until the time of Louis XIV from the Seine on the one side, from the palace on the other, by a ruelle; i.e. a narrow street, a lane.

Catherine took up her abode at the new palace as soon as it was habitable; but the Queen-Mother was restless and oppressed, haunted by presentiments of evil. An astrologer had told her she would meet her death beneath the ruins of a mansion in the vicinity of the church, St-Germain-l’Auxerrois. She left her new palace, therefore, bought the site of several houses, appropriated the ground and buildings of an old convent in the neighbourhood of St-Eustache, had erected on the spot a fine dwelling: l’hôtel de la Reine, known later as l’hôtel de Soissons, where we see to-day the Bourse de Commerce. One column of the Queen’s palace still stands there, within it a narrow staircase up which she was wont to climb with her Italian astrologer.

Meanwhile, the Tuileries palace showed no signs of ruin—quite the reverse. Catherine’s son, Charles IX, had a bastion erected in the garden on the Seine side; a small dwelling-house, a pond, an aviary, a theatre, an echo, a labyrinth, an orangery, a shrubbery were soon added. Henri IV began a gallery to join the new palace to the Louvre, a work accomplished only under Louis XIV. Under Henri’s son, Louis XIII, the Tuileries was the centre of the smart life of the day; visitors of distinction, but not of royal rank, were often entertained in royal style in the pavilion in the garden. Under Louis XIV the King’s renowned garden-planner, Le Nôtre, took in hand the spacious grounds and made of them the Jardin des Tuileries, so famous ever since. The fine statues by Coustou, Perrault, Bosi, etc., were soon set up there. The manège was built—a club and riding-school stretching from what is now the Rue de Rivoli from the then Rue Dauphine, now Rue St-Roch, to Rue Castiglione. There the jeunesse dorée of the day learned to hold in hand their fiery thoroughbreds. The cost of subscription was 4000 francs—£160—a year, a vast sum then. Each member was bound to have his personal servant, duly paid and fed. A swing-bridge was set across the moat on the side of the waste land, soon to become Place Louis XV, now Place de la Concorde.

The Garden was not accessible to the public in those days. Until the outbreak of the Revolution, the noblesse or their privileged associates alone had the right to pace its alleys. Soldiers were never permitted to walk there. Once a year only, a great occasion, its gates were thrown open to the peuple.

A period of neglect followed upon the fine work done under Louis XIV. His successor cared nothing for the Tuileries palace and grounds. They fell into a most lamentable state; and, when in the troublous days of the year 1789, Louis XVI, Marie-Antoinette and their little son took up their abode at the Tuileries, the Dauphin looked round in disgust. “Everything is very ugly here, maman,” he said. It was the Paris home of the unhappy royal family thenceforth until they were led from the shelter of its walls to the Temple prison. It was from the Tuileries they made the unfortunate attempt to fly from France. Stopped at Varennes, the would-be fugitives were led back to the palace across the swing-bridge on the south-western side. Beneath the stately trees of the garden the Swiss Guards were massacred soon afterwards. The Revolutionary authorities had taken possession of the Riding-School, a band of tricolour ribbon was stretched along its frontage and the Assemblée Nationale, which had sat first in the old church, St-Pol, then at the archevêché, installed itself there. There, under successive governments, were decreed the division of France into departments, the suppression of monastic orders, the suspension of the King’s royal power after his flight. And there, in 1792, Louis XVI was tried, and after a sitting lasting thirty-seven hours condemned to death. The Terrace was nicknamed the Jardin National; sometimes it was called the Terre de Coblentz, a sarcastic reference to emigrated nobles who erewhile had disported there. In 1793, potatoes and other vegetables—food for the population of Paris—grew on Le Nôtre’s flower-beds, replacing the gay blossoms of happier times, even as in our own dire war days beans, etc., are grown in the park at Versailles, and the government of the day sat in the Salle des Machines within the Palace walls.

On June 7th, 1794, the Tuileries palace and gardens were the scene of a great Revolutionary fête. A few months later the body of Jean-Jacques Rousseau was laid out in state in the dry bassin before being carried to the Panthéon. Revolutionary fêtes were a great feature of the day, and Robespierre, in the intervals of directing the deadly work of the Guillotine, devised the semi-circular flower-beds surrounded by stone benches for the benefit of the weak and aged who gathered at those merry-makings.

Then it was Napoléon’s turn. The Tuileries became an Imperial palace. For Marie Louise awaiting the birth of the son it was her mission to bear, a subterranean passage was made in order that the Empress might pass unnoticed from the palace to the terrace-walk on the banks of the Seine. The birth took place at the Tuileries, and a year or two later a pavilion was built for the special use of the young “Roi de Rome.” At the Tuileries, in the decisive year 1815, the chiefs of the Armies allied against the Emperor met and camped.

Louis XVIII died there in 1824. In 1848, Louis-Philippe, flying before the people in revolt, made his escape along the hidden passage cut in 1811 for Marie-Louise. The palace was then used as an ambulance for the wounded and for persons who fell fainting in the Paris streets during the tumults of that year. Its last royal master was Napoléon III. The new Emperor set himself at once to restore, beautify and enlarge. The great iron railing and the gates on the side of the Orangery were put up in 1853. A buvette for officers was built in the garden. The Prince Imperial was born at the Tuileries in 1854. During the twenty years of Napoléon’s reign, the Tuileries was the scene of gay, smart life. The crash of 1870 was its doom. The Empress Eugénie fled from its shelter after Sedan. The Commune set fire to its walls. Crumbling arches, blackened pillars remained on the site of the palace until 1883. Then they were razed, cleared away and flower-beds laid out, where grand halls erewhile had stood. The big clock had been saved from destruction. It was placed among the historic souvenirs of the Musée Carnavalet. The Pavillon de Marsan of the Louvre, built by Louis XIV, and the Pavillon de Flore joining the Tuileries, were rebuilt in 1874.

THE PALAIS-ROYAL

Crossing the Rue de Rivoli in the vicinity of the Louvre, we come to another palace—the Palais-Royal—of less ancient origin than the Louvre or the Tuileries, and never, strictly speaking, a royal palace. Built in the earlier years of the seventeenth century by Louis XIII’s powerful statesman, Cardinal Richelieu, it was known until 1643 as the Palais-Cardinal. Richelieu had lived at 20 and 23 of the Place-Royale, now Place des Vosges, and at the mansion known as the Petit Luxembourg, Rue de Vaugirard. The great man determined to erect for himself a more splendid residence, and made choice of the triangular site formed by the Rue des Bons-Enfants, Rue St-Honoré and the city wall of Charles V, whereon to build. Several big mansions encumbered the spot. Richelieu bought them all, had their walls razed, gave the work of construction into the hands of Jacques de Merrier. That was in the year 1629. The central mansion was ready for habitation four years later; additions were made, more hôtels bought and razed during succeeding years. Not content with mere courts and gardens around his palace, the Cardinal acquired yet another mansion, the hôtel Sillery, in order to make upon its site a fine square in front of his sumptuous dwelling. He did not live to see its walls knocked down. A few days after the completion of this purchase the famous statesman lay dead. It was then—a month or two later—that the Palais-Cardinal became the Palais-Royal. By his will, Richelieu bequeathed his palace to his King, Louis XIII, who died a few months later. Anne d’Autriche, mother of the young Louis XIV, was living at the Louvre which, in a continual state of reparation and enlargement, was not a comfortable home. Richelieu’s fine new mansion tempted her. It was truly of royal aspect and dimensions, and was fitted with all “the modern conveniences and comforts” of that day. To quote the words of a versifier of the time:

In 1643 the Queen moved across to it with her family. When the King left it in 1652, Henriette of England, widow of Charles I, lived there for a time. In 1672 Louis XIV made it over to his brother the duc d’Orléans, who did some rebuilding, but the most drastic changes were made in the vast construction close upon Revolutionary days. Then, in 1784, Philippe-Égalité, finding himself in an impecunious condition, conceived a fine plan for making money. Round three sides of the extensive garden of his palace he built galleries lined with premises to let—shops, etc.—and opened out around them three public thoroughfares: Rue de Valois, Rue Beaujolais, Rue Montpensier. The garden thus truncated is the Jardin du Palais-Royal as we know it to-day. It was even in those days semi-public. Parisians from all time have loved a fine garden, and the population of the city resented this curtailment. They resented more especially the mercantile spirit which had prompted it.

It was in the year 1787 that the theatre known subsequently as the Comédie Française, more familiarly the “Français,” was built. The artistes of the Variétés Amusantes played there then, and for several succeeding years. The theatre Palais-Royal had already been built, bore many successive different names and became for a time the Théâtre Montansier, later Théâtre de la Montagne. The fourth side of the palace had been left unfinished. The duc d’Orléans had planned its completion in magnificent style. The outbreak of the Revolution put a stop to all such plans. Temporary wooden galleries had been built in 1784. They were burnt down in 1828 and replaced by the Galerie d’Orléans, now let out in flats.

Richelieu was titular Superintendent-General of the Marine: some of the friezes and bas-reliefs illustrative of this office, decorating the Galerie des Proues, are still to be seen there. But of the great statesman’s original palace comparatively little remains. The duc d’Orléans, Regent for Louis XV, razed a great part of Richelieu’s construction; many of the walls of the palace as we know it date from his time—1702-23. Disastrous fires wrought havoc in 1763 and 1781. The financially inspired transformations of Philippe-Égalité made in 1786, and finally the incendiary work of the Commune in 1871, changed the whole aspect of the palace. It went through many phases also during the Revolution. Seized as national property, it was known for a time as Palais-Égalité. Revolutionary meetings took place in its gardens. Revolutionary clubs were organized in its galleries. The statue of Camille Desmoulins, set up in recent years—1905—records that decisive day, July 12th, 1789, when Desmoulins, haranguing the crowd, hoisted a green cocarde in sign of hope. That garden was thenceforth through many years the meeting-place of successive political agitators. In our own day the Camelots du Roi met and agitated there.

Under Napoléon as Premier Consul, the Tribunat was established there in a hall since razed. The Bourse de Commerce succeeded the Tribunat. Then the Orléans regained possession of the palace and Prince Louis-Philippe went thence to the hôtel de Ville, to return Roi des Français.

The galleries and the façade of the portico of the second court date from the first half of the nineteenth century. The upheaval of 1848 and the reign of Napoléon III resulted in further changes for the Palais-Royal. It became for a time Palais-National, and was subsequently put to military uses. Then King Jérôme took up his abode there, and was succeeded by his son Prince Napoléon. The little Gothic Chapel where Princess Clothilde was wont to pray serves now as a lumberroom. Prince Victor, the husband of Princess Clémentine of Belgium, was born at the Palais-Royal in 1862.

The galleries surrounding the garden are brimful of historic associations. Besides the clubs, noted Revolutionary clubs which met in the cafés, notorious gambling-houses existed there.

Galerie Montpensier, Nos. 7-12, is the ancient Café Corazza, the famous rendezvous of the Jacobins, frequented later by Buonaparte, Talma, etc.; 36, once Café des Mille Colonnes, was so named from the multiple reflection in surrounding mirrors of its twenty pillars. At 50 we see the former Café Hollandais, which had as its sign a guillotine; at 57-60 the Café Foy, before the doors of which Desmoulins harangued the people crowding there.

Galerie Beaujolais, No. 103—now a bar and dancing-hall—is the ancient Café des Aveugles, where in the sous-sol an orchestra played, formed entirely of blind men from the Quinze-Vingts, the hospital at first close by then removed to Rue Charenton, while the Sans-Culottes met and plotted. The mural portraits of notable Revolutionists seen there is modern work.

Galerie de Valois, Nos. 119, 120, 121, Ombres Chinoises de Séraphin (1784-1855) and Café Mécanique formed practically the first Express-Bar. At 177, was formerly the cutler’s shop where Charlotte Corday bought the knife to slay Marat.

Of the three streets made by the mercantile-minded duc d’Orléans the walls of two still stand undisturbed. In Rue de Valois we see, at No. 1, the ancient pavilion and passage leading from the Place de Valois, formerly the Cour des Fontaines, where the inhabitants of Palais-Royal drew their water; at 6-8 the restaurant, Bœuf à la mode, built by Richelieu as hôtel Mélusine; at 10, the façade of hôtel de la Chancellerie d’Orléans; at 20, hôtel de la Fontaine-Martel, inhabited for a year by Voltaire, 1732-33. In Rue de Beaujolais we find the theatre which began as Théâtre des Beaujolais, was for several years towards the close of the eighteenth century a theatre of Marionnettes, and is now Théâtre Palais-Royal. Then Rue de Montpensier—1784—shows us interesting old windows, ironwork, etc.; Rue Montesquieu—1802—runs where the Collège des Bons-Enfants once stood. The Mother-house of the Restaurants Duval, so well known in every quarter of Paris, at No. 6, is on the site of the ancient Salle Montesquieu, once a popular dancing saloon, then a draper’s shop with the sign of “Le Pauvre Diable” where the founder of the world-known Bon Marché was in his youth a salesman.

Three notable churches stand in the immediate vicinity of these three palaces. The ancient St-Germain-l’Auxerrois, St-Roch, erewhile its chapel of ease, and the Oratoire. St-Germain opposite the Louvre was the Chapel Royal of past ages. Its bells pealed for royal weddings, announced the birth of princes, tolled for royal deaths, rang on every other occasion of great national importance. Its biggest bell sounded the death-knell of the Protestants on the fatal eve of St-Bartholomew’s Day, 1572. No part of the fine old church as its stands to-day dates back as a whole beyond the fifteenth century, but a chapel stood on the site as early as the year 560. A baptistery and a school were built close to the chapel about a century later, and this early foundation was the eldest daughter of Notre-Dame—the Paris Cathedral. After its destruction by the invading Normans, it was rebuilt as a fine church by Robert le Pieux, in the first years of the eleventh century, and no doubt many of its ancient stones found a place in the walls of successive rebuildings and restorations. The beautiful Gothic edifice is rich in ancient glass, marvellous woodwork, pictures, statuary and historic memorials.

The first stone of St-Roch, in the Rue St-Honoré, was laid by Louis XIV, in 1653, but the church was not finished till nearly a century later. In the walls of its Renaissance façade we see marks of the grape-shot—the first ever used—that poured from the guns of the soldiers of the young Corsican officer, Napoléon Buonaparte, in the year 1795. Buonaparte had taken up his position opposite the church, facing the insurgent sectionnaires grouped on its broad steps. The fight that followed was the turning-point in the early career of the young officer fated to become for a time master of the city and of France. St-Roch is especially interesting on account of its many monuments of notable persons of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries and its groups of statuary. The Calvary of the Catechists’ Chapel, as seen through the opened shutters over the altar in the Chapel of the Adoration, is of striking effect.

The Oratory, Rue de Rivoli and Rue St-Honoré, was built during the early years of the seventeenth century as the mother-church of the Society of the Oratorians, founded in 1611, and served at times as the Chapel Royal. The Revolution broke up the Society of the Oratorians, their church was desecrated, secularized. In 1810, it was given to the Protestants and has been ever since the principal French Protestant Church of Paris. The statue of Coligny on the Rue de Rivoli side is modern—1889.

CHAPTER II

AMONG OLD STREETS

ROUND about these old palaces and churches some ancient streets still remain and many old houses, relics of bygone ages. Others have been swept away to make room for up-to-date thoroughfares, shops and dwellings. Place de l’École and Rue de l’École record the existence of the famous school at St-Germain-l’Auxerrois, a catechists’ school in the first instance, of more varied scope in Charlemagne’s time, where the pupils took their lessons in the open air when fine or climbed into the font of the baptistery when the font was dry. Rue de l’Arbre-Sec, once Rue de l’Arbre-Sel, from an old sign, a thoroughfare since the twelfth century, was in past days the site of the gallows. There it is said Queen Brunehaut was hacked to death. Part of this ancient street was knocked down to make way for the big shop “la Samaritaine”; but some ancient houses still stand. No. 4, recently razed, is believed to have been the hôtel des Mousquetaires, the home of d’Artagnan, lieutenant-captain of that famous band.

Rue Perrault runs where in bygone times Rue d’Auxerre, dating from 1005, and Rue des Fossés St-Germain-l’Auxerrois stretched away to the Monnaie—the Mint. No. 4, hôtel de Sourdis, rebuilt in the eighteenth century, was the home in her childhood of Gabrielle d’Estrées. No. 2, is the entrance to the presbytère St-Germain-l’Auxerrois. Rue de la Monnaie, a thirteenth-century street known at first by other names, recalls the existence of the ancient Mint on the site of Rue Boucher close by. In Rue du Roule, eighteenth century, we see old ironwork balconies. Rue du Pont-Neuf is modern, on the line of ancient streets of which all traces have gone. Most of the houses in Rue des Bourdonnais are ancient: In the walls of No. 31 we see two or three ancient stones of the famous La Trémouille Mansion once there occupied by the English under Charles VI. No. 34 dates from 1615. From the door of 39 the Tête-Noire with its barbe d’Or, which gave the house its name, still looks down. The sixth-century cabaret of l’Enfant-Jesus, the monogram I.H.S. in wrought iron on its frontage, has been razed. No. 14 is believed to have been the home of Greuze. The impasse at 37, in olden times Fosse aux chiens, was a pig-market where in the fourteenth century heretics were burnt. Rue Bertin-Poirée dates from the early years of the thirteenth century, recording the name of a worthy citizen of those long past days. At No. 5 we see a curious old sign “La Tour d’Argent”; out of this old street we turn into the Rue Jean-Lantier recording the name of a thirteenth-century Parisian, much of it and the ancient place du Chevalier-du-Guet which was here, swept away in 1854. Rue des Lavandières-Ste-Opportune, thirteenth century, reminds us of the existence of an old church, Ste-Opportune, in the neighbourhood. Rue des Deux-Boules existed under another name in the twelfth century. And here in the seventeenth century was l’École du Modèle, nucleus of l’Académie des Beaux-Arts.

Rue des Orfèvres began in 1300 as Rue des Deux-portes. An old chapel, St-Eloi, stood till 1786 by the side of No. 8. Rue St-Germain-l’Auxerrois was a thoroughfare so far back as the year 820. No. 19 is the site of a famous episcopal prison: For-l’Evêque. 38, at l’Arche Marion, duels were wont to be fought in olden days. Rue des Bons-Enfants, aforetime Rue des Echoliers St-Honoré, was so-called from the College founded in 1202 for “les Bons-Enfants” on the site of the neighbouring Rue Montesquieu, suppressed in 1602. Many of the old houses we see there were the possession and abode of the dignitaries of St-Honoré. A tiny church dedicated to Ste-Claire was in past days close up against the walls of No. 12. A vaulted arch and roof and staircase, lately razed, formed the entrance to the ancient cloister. Beneath a coat-of-arms over the doorway of No. 11, where is the Passage de la Vérité, an old inscription told of a reading-room once there, where both morning and evening papers were to be found. 19, hôtel de la Chancellerie d’Orléans, is on the site of a more ancient mansion. All the houses of this and neighbouring streets show some trace of their former state. Rue Radziwill was once Rue Neuve des Bons-Enfants, the name still to be seen on an old wall near the Banque de France. Nearly all the houses there have now become dependencies and offices of the Banque de France, one side of which gives upon the even number side of the street. At No. 33 is a wonderful twin staircase. At its starting it divides in two and winds up with old-time grace to the top story. Two persons can mount at once without meeting. Rue la Vrillière dates from 1652, named after the Secrétaire d’État of Louis XIV, whose mansion, remodelled, is the Banque de France with added to it the Salle Dorée des Fêtes and some other remains of the hôtel de Toulouse.

Rue Croix des Petits-Champs dates from 1600, its name referring to a cross which stood on the site of No. 12. No. 7, entrance of the old Cloître St-Honoré. In the courtyard of No. 21 we see traces of the habitation of the abbés. No. 23, hôtel des Gesvres, was the home of the parents of Mme de Pompadour.

Two long and important streets, one ancient the other modern, stretch through the entire length of this first arrondissement from east to west: Rue de Rivoli and Rue St-Honoré.

Rue de Rivoli, dating from the first half of the nineteenth century, was begun at its western end in the year 1811, across the site of ancient royal stables, along the line of the famous riding-school of the Tuileries gardens, and on through grounds erewhile the property of the three great convents: les Feuillants, les Capucins, l’Assomption. It swept away ancient streets and houses, picturesque courts and corners—a fine new thoroughfare built over the ruins of historic walls and pavements. There is little to say, therefore, about the buildings one sees there now. The hôtel Continental is on the site of one of the first of the constructions then erected—the Ministère des Finances, built during the second decade of the nineteenth century, burnt to the ground by the Commune in 1871. The famous Salle des Manèges, where the Revolutionary governments sat and King Louis XVI’s trial took place, was on the site of the houses numbered 230-226: l’hôtel Meurice, restaurant Rumpelmayer, etc., No. 186, a popular tearoom run by a British firm, is near the site of the Grande Écurie of vanished royalty, and of a well-known passage built there in the early years of the nineteenth century.

Admiral Coligny fell assassinated on the spot occupied by the house number 144. Passing on into the fourth arrondissement, we come to the Square St-Jacques, formed in 1854, where had stood the ancient church St-Jacques-la-Boucherie, of which the tower alone remains, a beautiful sixteenth-century tower, restored in the nineteenth century by the architect Ballu. Nos. 18-16 are on the site of the ancient convent of the Petit St-Antoine. In its chapel the Committee of the section “des droits de l’Homme” sat in Revolution days.

Rue St-Honoré is full of historic houses and historic associations. Its present name dates only from the year 1540, recalling the existence of the collegiate church of the district. Like most other long, old thoroughfares, Rue St-Honoré is made up of several past-time streets lying in a direct line, united under a single name. Almost every building along its course bears interesting traces of past grandeur or of commercial importance. Many have quaint, odd sign-boards: No. 96 is on the site of the Pavillon des Singes, where, in 1622, Molière was born. At No. 115 we see inscriptions dating from 1715. No. 108 is l’hôtel de l’Ecouvette, formerly part of hôtel Brissac. No. 145 is on a site where passed the boundary wall of Phillippe-Auguste and where was built subsequently a mansion inhabited by the far-famed duc de Joyeuse, then by Gabrielle d’Estrées, and wherein one Jean Châtel made an attempt upon the life of Henri IV. Nos. 180, 182, 184 were connected with the Cloître St-Honoré. No. 202 bore an inscription recording the erection here of the Royal Academy of Music by Pierre Moreau—1760-70—burnt down ten years later. No. 161, the Café de la Régence, replaced the famous café founded at the corner of the Palais-Royal in 1681, the meeting-place of chess-players. A chessboard was lent at so much the hour, the rate higher after sunset to pay for the two candles placed near. Voltaire, Robespierre, Buonaparte, Diderot, etc., and in later days Alfred de Musset and his contemporaries, met here. The city wall of Charles V passed across the site with its gateway, Porte St-Honoré. At this spot Jeanne d’Arc was wounded in 1429 and carried thence to the maison des Genêts on the site of No. 4, Place du Théâtre-Français. A bit of the ancient wall was found beneath the pavement there some ten years ago. No. 167, Arms of England. No. 280: Jeanne Vanbernier is said to have been saleswoman in a milliner’s shop here. No. 201 shows the old-world sign “Au chien de St-Roch.” At No. 211, hôtel St-James, are traces of the ancient hôtel de Noailles, which included several distinct buildings and extensive grounds. Part of it became, at the Revolution, the Café de Vénus; part the meeting-place of the Committees of Revolutionary governments. At 320 we see another old sign-board: “A la Tour d’Argent.” No. 334 was inhabited by Maréchal de Noailles, brother of the Archbishop of Paris, in 1700. Nos. 340-338 show traces of the ancient convent of the Jacobins. At No. 350, hôtel Pontalba, with its fine eighteenth-century staircase, lived Savalette de Langes, keeper of the Royal Treasure, who lent seven million francs to the brothers of Louis XVI, money never repaid, the home in Revolution days of Barrère, where Napoléon signed his marriage contract. Nos. 235, 231, 229, were built by the Feuillants 1782 as sources of revenue, and are the last remaining vestiges of the old convent. At 249 we see the Arms and portrait of Queen Victoria dating from the time of Louis-Philippe. No. 374 was the hôtel of Madame Géoffrin, whose salon was the meeting-place of the most noted politicians, littérateurs and artistes of the day, among them Châteaubriand, who made the house his home for a time. At No. 263 stands the chapel of the ancient convent des Dames de l’Assomption (see p. 29).

No. 398 is perhaps in part the very house, more probably the house entirely rebuilt, inhabited for a time by Robespierre and some of his family and by Couthon. No. 400 was the Imperial bakery in the time of Napoléon III. No. 271, now a modern erection, was till quite recently the famous cabaret du St-Esprit, dating from the seventeenth century, where during the Terreur sightseers gathered to watch the tragic chariots pass laden with victims for the guillotine. Marie-Antoinette passed that way and was subjected to that cruel scrutiny.

The greater number of the streets of this arrondissement running northwards start from Rue de Rivoli, and cross Rue St-Honoré, or start from the latter. Beginning at the western end of Rue Rivoli, we see Rue St-Florentin dating from 1640, so named more than a century later when the comte de St-Florentin deputed the celebrated architects Chalgrin and Gabriel to build the mansion we see at No. 2. It was a splendid mansion then, with surrounding galleries, fine gardens, a big fountain, and was the home of successive families of the noblesse. In 1792, it was the Venetian Embassy, under the Terreur a saltpeter factory. At No. 12 was an inn where people gathered to watch the condemned pass to the scaffold.

Rue Cambon, so named after the Conventional author of the Grand Livre de La Dette Publique, dates in its lower part, when it was Rue de Luxembourg, from 1719, prolonged a century later. Some of the older houses still stand, and have interesting vestiges of past days; others, razed in recent years, have been replaced by modern constructions. The new building, “Cour des Comptes,” built to replace the Palais du Quai d’Orsay burnt by the Communards in 1871, is on the site of the ancient convent of the Haudriettes, suppressed in 1793, when it became the garrison of the Cent Suisses, later a financial depot. The convent chapel, left untouched, serves as the catechists’ chapel for the Madeleine, and has services attended especially by Poles.

In Rue Duphot, opened in 1807 across the old garden of the Convent of the Conception, we see at No. 12 an ancient convent arch and courtyard.

Rue Castiglione (1811) stretches across the site of the convents Les Feuillants and Les Capucins.

In Rue du Mont-Thabor, stretching where was once a convent garden, a vaulted roof and chapel-like building at No. 24, at one time an artist’s studio, remains of the convent once there, is about to be razed. Orsini died at No. 10; Alfred de Musset at No. 6 (1857).

PLACE VENDÔME

In the year 1685 Louis XIV set about the erection of a grand place intended as a monument in his own honour. The site chosen was that of the hôtel Vendôme which had recently been razed, and of the neighbouring convent of the Capucins. The death of Louvois—1691—interrupted this work. It was taken in hand a year or two later by Mansart and Boffrand, who designed in octagonal form the vast place called at first Place des Conquêtes, then Place Louis-le-Grand. A statue of Louis XIV was set up there in 1699. The land behind the grand façades and houses erected by the State was sold for building purposes to private persons, and the notorious banker Law and his associates finished the Place in 1720. Royal fêtes were held there and popular fairs. Soon it was the scene of financial agitations, then of Revolutionary tumults. On August 10, 1792, heads of the guillotined were set up there on spikes and the square was named Place des Piques. A bonfire was made of volumes referring to the title-deeds of the French noblesse and the archives of the St-Esprit; and in 1796 the machines which had been used to make assignats were solemnly burnt there. In 1810 the Colonne d’Austerlitz was set up where erewhile had stood the statue of Louis XIV, made of cannons taken from the enemy, its bas-reliefs illustrative of the chief events of the momentous year 1805. It was surmounted by a statue of Napoléon, which, in 1814, the Royalists vainly attempted to pull down by means of ropes. It was taken away later, the drapeau blanc put up in its stead. Napoléon’s statue, melted down, was transformed into the statue of Henri IV on the Pont-Neuf, replacing the original statue set up there (see p. 340). In 1833, Napoléon went up again, a newly designed statue, replaced in its turn by a reproduction of the first one in 1865. In 1871, the Column was overturned by the Communards, but set up anew by the French Government under MacMahon.

Every mansion on the Place, most of them now commercial hotels or business-houses, was at one time or another the habitation of noted men and women, and recalls historic events. The façades of Nos. 9 and 7 are classed as historic monuments; their preservation cared for by the State. No. 23 was the scene of Law’s speculations after his forced move from his quarters in the old Rue Quincampoix. At No. 6 Chopin died.

The Rue and Marché St-Honoré are on the site of the ancient convent and chapel of the Jacobins, suppressed at the Revolution, and where the famous club des Jacobins was established. The market dates from 1810. Rue Gomboust dates from the thirteenth century, when it was Rue de la Corderie St-Honoré. Rue de Ste-Hyacinthe dates from 1650. Rue de la Sourdière from the seventeenth century shows us many old-time walls and vestiges and much interesting old ironwork.

On the wall of the church St-Roch we still see the inscription “Rue Neuve-St-Roch,” the ancient name of the street at its western end. The street has existed from the close of the fifteenth century bearing different names in the different parts of its course. The part nearest the Tuileries was known in the eighteenth century as Rue du Dauphin, in Revolution days as Rue de la Convention. Many of its houses are ancient and of curious aspect.

In Rue d’Argenteuil, leading out of Rue St-Roch, once a country road, stood until recent years the house where Corneille died.

Rue des Pyramides dates only from 1806, but No. 2 of the street is noted as the meeting-place, in the rooms of a friend, of Béranger, Alexandre Dumas, père, Victor Hugo and other famous writers of the day. In the fourth story of a house in the corner of the Place dwelt Émile Augier.

From the Place du Théâtre-Français where the fountain has played since the middle of the nineteenth century, the Avenue de l’Opéra opened out about 1855 as Avenue Napoléon, cut through a conglomeration of ancient streets and dwellings. Leading out of the Avenue there still remains in this arrondissement Rue Molière, known in the seventeenth century as Rue du Bâton-Royal, then as Rue Traversière, and always intimately associated with actors and men of letters. Rue Ste-Anne was known in its early days as Rue du Sang and Rue de la Basse Voirie, then an unsavoury alley-like thoroughfare. Its present name, after Anne d’Autriche, was given in 1633. Then for a time it was known as Rue Helvetius, in memory of a man of letters born there in 1715. Nearly all its houses are ancient and were the habitation in past days of noted persons, artists and others. Nos. 43 and 47 were the property of the composer Lulli. The street runs on into arrondissement II, where at No. 49, hôtel Thévenin, we see an old statue of John the Baptist holding the Paschal Lamb. At No. 46 Bossuet lived and died. No. 63 was part of the New Catholic’s convent. Nos. 64, 66, 68, mansions owned by Louvois.

Rue Thérèse (Marie-Thérèse of Austria) was in 1880 joined on to Rue du Hazard, a short street so called from a famous gambling-house; No. 6 has interesting old-time vestiges. At No. 23 we see two inscriptions honouring the memory of Abbé de l’Epée, inventor of the deaf and dumb alphabet, who died at a house, no longer there, in Rue des Moulins. Rue Villedo records the name of a famous master-mason of olden time. Rue Ventadour existed in its older part in 1640. Rue de Richelieu, starting from the Place du Théâtre-Français, goes on to arrondissement II in the vicinity of the Bourse. It dates from the time when the Cardinal was building his palace. Most of its constructions show interesting architectural features, vestiges of past days, many have historic associations. Some of the original houses were rebuilt in the eighteenth century, some have quite recently been razed and replaced by modern erections. Much of the fine woodwork once at No. 21 was bought and carried away by the Marquis de Breteuil; the rest by Americans. In a house where No. 40 now stands Molière died in 1763. No. 50, hôtel de Strasbourg, was rebuilt in 1738 by the mother of Madame de Pompadour. In 1780 the musician Grétry lived in the fourth story of No. 52.

Rue du Louvre is a modern street where ancient streets once ran, demolished to make way for it. At No. 13 we find traces of a tower of the city wall of Philippe-Auguste, as also at No. 7 of the adjacent Rue Coquillère, a thirteenth-century street with, at No. 31, vestiges of an ancient Carmelite convent. At No. 15 we find ourselves before an arched entrance and spacious courtyard surrounded by imposing buildings and in its centre an immense fountain. This structure is a modern re-erection of the ancient Cour des Fermes; the institution of the “Fermiers Généraux” was suppressed in 1783 and definitely abolished by law in the first year of the Revolution—1789. The members, however, continued to meet; many were arrested and shut up as prisoners in their own old mansion on this spot, used thenceforth, until the Revolution was over, as a State prison.

CHAPTER III

THE NEIGHBOURHOOD OF THE GREAT MARKETS

LES HALLES CENTRALES

THE legend telling us the great Paris Market was first called “les Alles”—no “H”—because everybody y allait, i.e. went there, need not be taken seriously. Even in remote mediæval times the markets had some covered premises or “Halles.” The earliest Paris market of which we have record takes us back to the year 1000, that momentous year predicted by sooth-sayers for the end of the world; few sowings, therefore, had been made the preceding season. The market stalls of that year were but scantily furnished. That ancient market lying along the banks of the Seine in the vicinity of the present Place St-Michel, and its successor on what was then Place de Grève (see p. 95) went by the curious name Palu. In ancient days, under Louis-le-Gros, the site of the immense erection and market-square we see now was known of old as le terrain des champeaux—the territory of little fields—land owned in part by the King, in part by ecclesiastical authorities, and bought for the great market in the twelfth century. The sale of herrings, wholesale and retail, goes on to-day on the very site set apart for fishmongers in the time of St. Louis. Rue Baltard, running through the centre of the pavilions, records the name of the architect of the present structure, which dates from 1856. Rue Antoine-Carême records the name of Napoléon I’s cook. Ancient streets surround us here on every side, old houses, curious old signs. Rue Berger is made up of several ancient streets united. The part of Rue Rambuteau bordering les Halles lies along the line of four thirteenth-century streets known of yore by old-world names. Rue des Halles, leading up to the Markets from the Rue Rivoli, a modern thoroughfare (1854), made along the course of ancient streets, has curious old streets leading into it: Rue des Déchargeurs, a characteristic name, was opened in 1310. The short Rue du Plat d’Étain opening out of it dates from 1300, when it was Rue Raoul Tavernier. Rue de la Ferronnerie, extremely narrow at that period, is noted as the scene of the assassination of Henri IV in front of a house on the site of No. 11 (14 May, 1610). From the days of Louis IX the street was, as its name implies, the resort of ironmongers. Good old ironwork is still seen on several of the houses. Rue Courtalon (thirteenth century) is entirely made up of ancient houses. Rue de la Lingerie, formerly Rue des Gantiers, was a well-built street in the time of Henri II, but most of the houses seen there now are modern. Rue Prouvaires—from provoire, old French for prêtres—thirteenth century, is referred to in the time of Louis IX as one of the finest streets of Paris. It extended formerly to the church St-Eustache. Of the old streets once along the course of the modern Rue du Pont-Neuf all traces have been swept away.

To the north side of Les Halles, we find Rue Mondétour, dating from 1292, but many of its ancient houses have been razed; modern ones occupy their site. A dancing-hall in this old street was the meeting-place of French Protestants before the passing of the Edict of Nantes. No. 14 has cellars in two stories.

The church St-Eustache is often familiarly referred to by the market women as Notre-Dame des Halles. The crypt, once the chapel Ste-Agnes, the nucleus of the grand old church, dating from 1200, secularized but still forming one with the sacred building, is a fruiterer’s shop—truly St-Eustache is the church of the Markets. The edifice as it stands dates as a whole from the seventeenth century. Gothic in its grand lines, very strikingly impressive, it has a Jesuit frontage, substituted for the Gothic façade originally planned, and Renaissance ornamentation within. The church was mercilessly truncated in the eighteenth century to allow for the making and widening of surrounding streets.

Rue du Jour under other names has existed from the early years of the thirteenth century, but was then close up against the city wall of Philippe-Auguste. Nos. 3, 4, 5, 7, 11 are ancient, and No. 25, with its traces of bygone ages, is believed to be on the site of the house where Charles V made from time to time a séjour, hence the name, truncated, of the street.

Rue Vauvilliers, until 1864 Rue du Four St-Honoré, dates from the thirteenth century. Here, at No. 33, lodged young Buonaparte, the future Emperor, at the ancient hôtel de Cherbourg, in 1787. To-day it is a butcher’s shop. Several of the houses have curious signs and other vestiges of past days. The circular colonnaded street we come to now, Rue de Viarmes, was built in 1768 by the Prévôt des Marchands whose name it bears. It surrounds the Bourse de Commerce built in 1889 on the site of the Halles aux Blés erected in the first instance in 1767, twice burnt to the ground and twice subsequently rebuilt on the site of the famous hôtel de Nesle where la Reine Blanche, mother of St. Louis, is said to have died in 1252. L’hôtel de Nesle was inhabited later by the blind King of Bohemia, killed at Crécy, and subsequently by other persons of note, then was taken to form part of the Couvent des Filles Pénitentes, appropriated with several adjoining hôtels in after years by Catherine de’ Medici (see p. 9). After the Queen’s death, as the possession of the comte de Bourbon, it was known as l’hôtel de Soissons; in 1749 it was razed to the ground. One ancient pillar, la Colonne de l’Horoscope, with its interior flight of steps still stands.

Rue Jean-Jacques Rousseau, in the days when its upper part was the ancient Rue Platrière, the lower Rue Grenelle-St-Honoré, counted among its inhabitants Rousseau, Bossuet, Marat, Fragonard, Boucher, the duchesse de Valentinois, and other noted personages. Most of the ancient dwellings have been replaced by modern constructions. Where the General Post Office now stands, extending down Rue du Louvre, the comte de Flandre had a fine mansion in the thirteenth century. Destroyed in 1543, it was replaced by another fine hôtel, which became the Paris post office in 1757, rebuilt in 1880. We see interesting architectural traces of past days at Nos. 15, 18, 19, 20, 33, 56, 64, 68. This brings us to Rue Étienne-Marcel, its name recalling the stirring and tragic history of the Prévôt de Paris at the time of the Jacquerie-Marcel, in revolt against the Dauphin; Charles V had the two great nobles, Jean de Conflans and Robert de Clermont, killed in the King’s presence, and was himself struck down dead when on the point of giving Paris over to Charles-le-Mauvais in 1358. But the name only is ancient, the street is entirely modern, cut across the line where ancient streets once ran. Some few old-time vestiges remain here and there, notably the Tour de Jean Sans Peur at No. 20, all that is left of the hôtel de Bourgoyne, built in the thirteenth century, to which the tower was added in 1405; it was partially destroyed in the sixteenth century, while what still stood became a theatre, the chief Paris play-house, the cradle of the Comédie Française.

Rue Montmartre, crossing Rue Étienne-Marcel and going on into the arrondissement II, dates at this end—its commencement—from the close of the eleventh century. In Revolution days it was known as Rue Mont-Marat! As long as Paris had fortified boundary walls there was always a Porte Montmartre, moved northward three times, as the city bounds extended. The Porte of Philippe-Auguste was where the house No. 30 now stands, and this part of the street was known then as Rue Porte-Montmartre. The Passage de la Reine de Hongrie memorizes a certain dame de la Halle in whom Marie-Antoinette saw a remarkable likeness to her mother, the Queen of Hungary. The woman became for her generation “la Reine de Hongrie”—the alley where she dwelt was called by this name. She shared not only the title but the fate of royalty: was beheaded by the guillotine.

Rue Montorgueil, beginning here and leading to the higher ground called when the Romans ruled in Gaul “Mons Superbus,” now the levelled boulevard Bonne-Nouvelle and its surrounding streets, was known in the thirteenth century as Mont Orgueilleux. In bygone days, the Parisians strolled out to the Mont Orgueilleux to eat oysters. There was a famous oyster-bed on the site of the house now razed where, in 1780, was born that exquisite song and ballad writer, Béranger. The ancient house, No. 32, is said to have been the home of the architect, Jean Goujon. The little side-street Rue Mauconseil dates from 1250, and tradition says its name is due to the mauvais conseil given within the walls of the hôtel de Bourgoyne, close by, which led to the assassination of the duc d’Orléans by Jean Sans Peur. In Revolution days, therefore, it was promptly renamed for the nonce Rue du Bon Conseil! At No. 48 we find a famous tripe-eating house. No. 47 was once the Central Sedan Chair Office. At No. 51 we see interesting signs over the door, and painted panels signed by Paul Baudry within (1864). Nos. 64, 72 is the old sixteenth-century inn, the “Compas d’Or,” and the famous restaurant Philippe. The coachyard of the inn is little changed from the days when coaches plied between that starting-place and Dreux. The restaurant du Rocher de Cancale, at No. 78, dating from 1820, where the most celebrated men of letters and art of the nineteenth century met and dined, was at first “Le Petit Rocher,” then the successor of the ancient restaurant at No. 59 dating from the eighteenth century, where the dîners du Caveau and the dîners du Vaudeville were eaten by gay literary and artistic dîneurs of olden time.

Rue Turbigo is modern and makes us think regretfully of ancient streets and of the apse of the church St-Elisabeth demolished to make way for it. Turning down Rue St-Denis, the famous “Grande Chaussée de Monsieur St-Denis” of ancient days, the road along which legend tells us the saint, coming from the heights above, walked carrying his head after decapitation, we find it, from this point to the vicinity of the Châtelet, rich in historic buildings and vestiges of a past age. Kings on their way to Notre-Dame entered Paris in state along this old road; it was connected more or less closely with every political event of bygone times, with Parisian pleasures too, for there of old the mystery plays went on. Curious old streets and passages open out of it: at 279 the quaint Rue Ste-Foy. In the court of No. 222 we see the hôtel St. Chaumont, its façade on boulevard Sebastopol, dating from 1630.

The church we come to at No. 92 dedicated to St. Leu and St. Gilles was built in the early years of the thirteenth century on the site of an earlier church, a dependent of the Abbaye St-Magloire close by, suppressed at the Revolution. Subsequent restorations, and the building in the eighteenth century of a subterranean chapel for the knights of the Holy Sépulcre, have resulted in an interesting old church of mingled Gothic and Renaissance style; its apse was lopped off to make way for the modern boulevard Sébastopol. The would-be assassin Cadoudal hid for three days crouched up against the figure of Christ in the chapel beneath the chancel (1804). Rue des Lombards dates from the thirteenth century, and at one or two of its houses, notably No. 62, we find an underground hall with vaulted roof and Gothic windows. At No. 56 we see an open corner. It is “ground accurst.” The house of two Protestant merchants who in 1579 were put to death for their “evil practices!” once stood there. Their dwelling was razed and a pyramid and crucifix were set up on the spot, soon afterwards removed to the cemetery des Innocents hard by.

The chemist’s shop at No. 44, “Au Mortier d’Or,” united now to its neighbour “A la Barbe d’Or,” dates, as regards its foundation, from the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. In the window we see an open volume printed in 1595 with the engraved portrait of the founder.

Rue des Innocents was opened in 1786 across the site of the graveyard of the church des Saints-Innocents, founded in 1150 and which stood till 1790. More than a million bodies are said to have been buried in that churchyard. In 1780 the cemetery was turned into a market-place. But it was again used as a burial ground for victims of the Revolution of 1830. Their bones lie now beneath the Colonne de Juillet on the Place de la Bastille. The market-place became a square: “Le Square des Innocents.” The fine old fountain dating from 1550, the work of the famous sculptors Pierre Lescot and Jean Goujon, was taken from its site in the Rue St-Denis, restored by the best sculptors of the day, and set up there in 1850. The beautiful portal of the ancient bureau des Marchandes-lingères was placed there in more recent times. The ground floor of most of the old houses of this street are ancient charniers, many of them built by one Nicolas Flamel. Therein were laid in past days the bones periodically gathered from the graveyard. The name “Cabaret du Caveau” at No. 15 tells its own tale. In Rue Berger, formed along the line of several demolished streets of old, we see some ancient signs, but little else of interest. Old signs too, in Rue de la Cossonnerie, so named from the cossonniers, i.e. poultry-merchants, whose market was here and which was known as early as 1182 as Via Cochonerie. Rue des Prêcheurs is another twelfth-century street and there we see many ancient houses: Nos. 6-8, etc. Rue Pirouette, one of the most ancient of Paris streets, recalls the days of the pilori des Halles, when its victims, forced to turn from side to side, made la pirouette. Here the duc d’Angoulême had his head cut off under Louis XI, and the duc de Nemours in 1477. At No. 5 we see the ancient doorway of the demolished hôtellerie du Haume (fourteenth century), at No. 9 was the cabaret de l’Ange Gabriel (now razed), at No. 13 vestiges of an ancient mansion. A few old houses still stand in the Rue de la Grande Truanderie (thirteenth century). Rue de la Petite Truanderie, of the same date, was once noted for its old well, “le Puits d’Amour,” in the small square half-way down the street, of old the truands’ quarter (see p. 56).

CHAPTER IV

THE PALAIS DE JUSTICE

THE history of Paris and of France, from the earliest days of their story, is connected with the Palais de Justice on the western point of the island on the Seine. The palace stands on the site of the habitation of the rulers of Lutetia in the days of the Romans, of the first Merovingian and of the first Capetian kings. The present building, often reconstructed, restored, enlarged, dates in its foundations and some other parts from the time of Robert le Pieux. King Robert built the Conciergerie. Under Louis IX the palace was again considerably enlarged; the kitchens of St. Louis are an interesting feature in the palace as we know it. In 1434, Charles VII gave up the palace to the Parliament. It met in the great hall above St. Louis’ kitchens, and round an immense table there law tribunals assembled. For the French Parliament of those times was in some sort a great law-court. Guizot describes it as: “la cour souveraine du roi, la cour suprême du royaume.” Known in its earliest days as “Le Conseil du Roi,” its members were the grandees of the kingdom: vassals, prelates, officers of State, and it was supposed to follow the King wherever he went, though as a matter of fact it rarely moved from Paris. When, in course of time, it was considered desirable that its members should all be able not only to read but to write, the great nobles of that age declared they were not going to change their swords for a writing-desk and many withdrew, to be replaced by men of lesser rank but greater skill in other directions than that of arms, and who came to be regarded as the noblesse de la robe—distinct from la noblesse de l’épee.

LA TOUR DE L’HORLOGE, LES “TOURS POINTUES” DE LA CONCIERGERIE ET LE MARCHÉ AUX FLEURS

The big hall of that day and other adjacent halls and passages were burnt down more than once in olden times, and burnt down again in 1871, when the Communards wrought havoc on so many fine old buildings of their city. The most thrilling incidents, the most stirring events in the history of the Nation had some point of connection with that ancient palace—often a culminating point. And within those grim walls where the destinies of men and women of all conditions and ranks were determined, where tragedy held its own, scenes in lighter vein were not unknown in ancient days. Mystery plays were often given there, and every year in the month of May, reputed a “merry month,” even in the Palais de Justice, the company of men of law known as the “basoche,” planted a May-tree in the courtyard before the great entrance doors—hence the name “la Cour de Mai.” It is a tragic courtyard despite its name, for the Conciergerie prison opened into it; through the door of what is now the Buvette du Palais—a refreshment-room—men and women condemned to death passed, in Revolution days, while other men and women, women chiefly, crowded on the broad steps above to see the laden charrettes start off for the place of execution.

The Sainte-Chapelle, that wondrous piece of purest Gothic architecture, the work of Pierre de Montereau (1245-48) built for the preservation of sacred relics brought by Louis IX on his return from the Holy Land, vividly recalls the days when the palace was a royal habitation. Its upper story was in direct communication with the royal dwelling-rooms; the lower story was for the palace servants and officials. During the Revolution the chapel was devastated and used as a club and a flour-store. The Chambre des Comptes, a beautiful old building in the courtyard of the Sainte-Chapelle, was destroyed by fire in 1737. Its big arch was saved and forms part of the Musée Carnavalet (see p. 81). A chief feature of the chapelle is its exquisite stained glass.

The enlarging of the Palais in recent times (1908) swept away surrounding relics of bygone ages. Some vestiges of past days still remain in Rue de Harlay opposite the Palais, to the west—Nos. 20, 54, 52, 68, 74. The buildings of the boulevard du Palais and Rue de Lutèce, on its eastern side, arrondissement IV, are all modern on ancient historic sites.

Place Dauphine dates from 1607. It was built as a triangular place, its name referring to the son of Henri IV. In earlier ages, the site formed two islets, on one of which, l’îlot des Juifs, Jacques de Morlay, Grand Master of the Templars, suffered death by burning in 1314. A fountain stood on the Place to the memory of General Desaix, erected by public subscription, carted away in the time of the first Republic, and set up at Riom. Painters excluded from the Salon used to exhibit their work here each year, in the open air, on Corpus Christi day. Some of the houses still show seventeenth-and eighteenth-century vestiges. No. 28, now much restored, was Madame Roland’s early home. The writer Halévy died at 26 (1908).

The Quays of the island bordering the Palais north and south both date from the sixteenth century. Both have been curtailed by the enlargement of the Palais. On Quai des Orfèvres, the goldsmith’s quay, from the first the jewellers’ quarter, still stands the shop once owned by the jewellers implicated in the affair of the “Collier de la Reine.” The Quai de l’Horloge is still the optician’s quarter and was known in olden days as Quai des Morfondus, on account of the blasting winds which swept along it—and do so still in winter-time. The palace clock in the fine old tower built in the thirteenth century, restored after the ravages of the Revolution in the nineteenth, from which the quay takes its present name, is a successor of the first clock seen in France, set up there about the year 1370. There, too, hung in olden days a great bell rung as a signal on official occasions, and which perhaps rang out the death-knell of the Huguenots even before the sounding of the bell at St-Germain l’Auxerrois, on the eve of St. Bartholomew’s Day, 1572.

CHAPTER V

THE NEIGHBOURHOOD OF THE BIBLIOTHÈQUE NATIONALE

ARRONDISSEMENT II. (BOURSE)

RUE DES PETITS-CHAMPS marks the boundary between the arrondissements I and II—the odd numbers in arrondissement I, the even ones in arrondissement II. The street was opened in 1634. Many of its old houses still stand and show us, without and within, some interesting architectural features of past days. The hôtel Tubeuf, No. 8, destined with adjoining mansions to become the Bibliothèque Nationale, was, tradition tells us, staked at the gambling table and won by the statesman Mazarin. The Cardinal bought two adjoining hôtels and surrounding land as far as the Rue Colbert and built thereon his own fine mansion, using the two hôtels as wings. The first books placed there were those of his own library, a fine collection, taken at his death, according to the directions of his will, to the Collège des Quatre Nations, known to-day as the Institut Mazarin. The Cardinal’s vast mansion was divided among his heirs and in its different parts was put to various uses during following years till, in 1721, it was bought by the Crown. The King’s library was then taken there from Rue Vivienne, where it had been placed in 1666, and soon afterwards opened to the public. The greater part of the building has been reconstructed in modern times and enlarged. The blackened walls of a part of Mazarin’s mansion, that formed l’hôtel de Nivers, still stand at the corner of Rue Colbert. The chief entrance to the Library is in Rue de Richelieu. Engravings, medals, works of art of many descriptions connected with letters may be seen at what has been successively Bibliothèque Royale, Bibliothèque Impériale and is now Bibliothèque Nationale. The ceiling of the Galerie Mazarin is covered with splendid frescoes by Romanelli. The heart of Voltaire is said to be encased in the statue we see there. Madame de Récamier died at the Library in 1849; she had taken refuge there in the rooms of her niece, whose husband was one of the officials when the cholera broke out in l’Abbaye-aux-Bois. Opposite the Library, on the Rue Richelieu side, is the Square Louvois dating from 1839, on the site of two old hôtels once there. There, in 1793, Citoyenne Montansier set up a theatre, known successively as Théâtre des Arts, Théâtre de la Loi and the Opéra.

After the assassination of the duc de Berri in front of No. 3 Rue du Rameau (February 13, 1820) as he was about to re-enter the Opera-House, Louis XVIII intended to build there a chapelle expiatoire. The Revolution of 1830 put an end to that project. The big poplar-tree, seen until recent years overlooking Rue Rameau, was planted as a tree of Liberty in 1848. It suddenly died in 1912. The fountain is the work of Visconti and Klagman (1844). In Rue Chabanais (1777) at No. 11, Pichegru, betrayed by Leblanc, was arrested (1804). Proceeding down Rue de Richelieu we see grand old mansions throughout its entire length. No. 71 formed part of the hôtel Louvois, given some four years before her tragic death to princesse de Lamballe who built roomy stables there. On the site of No. 62, quite recently demolished, was the hôtel de Talaru, built in 1652, which became one of the most noted prisons of the Terreur, and where its owner, the marquis de Talaru, was himself imprisoned. No. 75 was l’hôtel de Louis de Mornay, one of the most noted lovers of Ninon de Lenclos. No. 78, in the past a famous lace-shop, was owned by the East India Company. No. 93, once the immense hôtel Crozet, property of the ducs de Choiseul, cut through in 1780 by the making of two neighbouring streets, was inhabited in 1715 by Watteau. No. 102 stands on the site of a house owned by Voltaire, inhabited at one time by his niece. No. 104, at first a private mansion, became successively Taverne Britannique (1845-52), Restaurant Richelieu, Union Club du Billard et du Sport. No. 101 was at one time the restaurant du Grand U, so called in 1883 from an article in “Le National” apropos of the Union Republicaine.

Leading out of Rue Richelieu, in the vicinity of the Bibliothèque Nationale, we see old houses in Rue St-Augustin, and Rue des Filles de St-Thomas, the latter cut short in more recent days by the Place de la Bourse and the Rue du Quatre-Septembre. The busts on No. 7 of the latter street recall a theatrical costume store of past days. No. 21 Rue Feydeau was the site of the Théâtre des Nouveautés, which became the Opéra-Comique, demolished in 1830. Rue des Colonnes was in former days closed at each end by gates. At No. 14 Rue St-Marc, Ernest Logouvé was born, lived, died (1807-1903). La Malibran was born at No. 31.

The Bourse stands on the site of the convent of les Filles St-Thomas. Its cellars still exist beneath what was before 1914 the Restaurant Champeaux, Rue du 4 Septembre. The chapel stood till 1802 and was during the Revolution the meeting-place of the reactionary section Le Peletier; the insurgent troops defeated by Buonaparte on the steps of St-Roch had assembled there (1795) (see p. 20).

The first stone of the present Bourse was laid in 1808. The building was enlarged in the early years of this century. The Paris Exchange stockbrokers had in early times met at the Pont-au-Change; during the Revolution they gathered in the chapelle des Petits-Pères; later at the Palais-Royal.

The fine old door of the hôtel Montmorency-Luxembourg still stands at the entrance to the Passage des Panoramas, leading to the old galleries: Galerie Montmartre and Galerie des Variétés—opening out on Rue Montmartre and Rue Vivienne. Until after the Revolution there were no shops in Rue Vivienne, so full to-day of shops and business houses. It records the name of a certain sire Vivien, King’s secretary, owner of a hôtel in the newly opened thoroughfare. Thierry lived there in 1834, Alphonse Karr in 1835. The great gates of the Bibliothèque Nationale on this side are those which in bygone days closed the Place-Royale, now Place des Vosges. No. 49 is the most ancient Frascati Dining Saloon with the old ballroom candelabras. Many of the houses have interesting old-time vestiges.

Rue Notre-Dame-des-Victoires was until after 1633 le “Chemin-Herbu,” the grass-grown road; Nos. 30, 28, 14, 13, 10, 4, 2 are ancient: other old houses have been demolished. The Place-des-Victoires from which it starts was the site of the fine hôtel de Pomponne, which later served as the Banque de France. Most of the houses are ancient with interesting architectural features.

Place des Petits-Pères close by is best known for the church there, Notre-Dame-des-Victoires, a name given to record the taking of La Rochelle from the Protestants in 1627. Its first stone was laid by Louis XIII in 1629, but the church was not finished till more than a century later. It was for long the convent chapel of the Augustins Déchaussés, commonly known as the Petits-Pères, from the remarkably short stature of the two monks, its founders. The Lady-chapel is a place of special pilgrimage and is brimful of votive offerings. The church is never empty. Passers-by rarely fail to go in to say a prayer, or spend a quiet moment there; work-girls from the shops and offices and workrooms of the neighbourhood go there in their dinner-hour for rest and shelter from the streets. Services of thanksgiving after victory are naturally a special feature there. The choir has fine pictures by Van Loo. Rue des Petits-Pères dates from 1615 and shows interesting traces of past ages. Rue d’Aboukir lies along the line of three seventeenth-century streets, in one of which Buonaparte lived for a time. Many old houses still stand there; others of historical association have been demolished, modern buildings erected on their site. Half-way down the street is Place du Caire, once the site of that most truly Parisian industry: carding and mattress-making and cleaning. French mattresses are, in normal times, turned inside out, cleaned or refilled very frequently.

A hospital and a convent stretched along part of the place and across Passage du Caire in past days. Several houses there are ancient, as also in Rue Alexandrie.

In Rue du Mail, at what is now hôtel de Metz, Buonaparte lodged in 1790. We see many old houses. Spontini lived here, and No. 12 was inhabited by Madame Récamier and also by Talma. The modern Rue du Quatre-Septembre has swept away many an interesting old thoroughfare. At No. 100 the Passage de la Cour des Miracles recalls the ancient cour of the name, done away with in 1656, of which some traces still remain—the scene in olden days of feats of apparent healing and of physical transformation whereby the truands, persons of no avowed or avowable occupation, gained precarious deniers. Out of this long modern street we may turn into many shorter ancient ones. Rue du Sentier, recalling by its name a pathway through a wood—sentier, a corruption of chantier—has fine old houses and knew in its time many inhabitants of mark. At No. 8 lived Monsieur Lebrun, a famous picture dealer, husband of Madame Vigée Lebrun. At No. 2 dwelt Madame de Staël, at Nos. 22-24, in rooms erewhile decorated by Fragonard, Le Normand d’Étioles, husband of La Pompadour, after his separation from her. No. 33 was the home of his wife in her girlhood and at the time of her marriage. At No. 30 lived Sophie Gay.

Rue St-Joseph, so named from a seventeenth-century chapel knocked down in 1800, of which we find some traces, was previously Rue du Temps-Perdu; in the graveyard attached to St-Eustache—later a market—La Fontaine and Molière were buried, their ashes transferred in 1818 to Père-Lachaise. At No. 10 Zola was born (1840). Rue du Croissant (seventeenth century) is a street of ancient houses and the chief newspaper street of the city. Paper hawkers crowd there at certain hours each day, then rush away, vying with one another to call attention to their stock-in-trade. At No. 22, Café du Croissant, at the corner where this street meets the Rue Montmartre, journalists assemble, and there the notable Socialist, Jaurès, was shot dead on the eve of the outbreak of war, July 31st, 1914. The sign at No. 18 is said to date from 1612. In Rue des Jeûneurs (1643)—the name a corruption from des Jeux-Neufs—we see more ancient houses and leading out of it the old Rue St-Fiacre, once Rue du Figuier. No. 19 was inhabited in recent years by a lady left a widow after one year’s married life, who, owner of the building, dismissed the tenants of its six large flats and shut herself up in absolute solitude till her death at the age of eighty-nine. No. 23 was designed by Soufflot le Romain (1775). Rue Montmartre in its course continued from arrondissement I, which it leaves at Rue Étienne-Marcel, shows many interesting vestiges. At No. 178 we see a bas-relief of the Porte Montmartre of past days. Within the modern Brasserie du Coq, a copy of the automatic cock of Strasbourg Cathedral, dating from 1352. On the frontage of No. 121 a curious set of bells, and a quaint sign, “A la grâce de Dieu,” dating from 1710. No. 118 was known in past days as the house of clocks. Thirty-two were seen on its frontage, the work of a Swiss clockmaker. Going up this old street in order to visit the streets leading out of it, we turn into Rue Tiquetonne, which recalls by its aspect fourteenth-century times, by its name a prosperous baker of that century, a certain M. Rogier de Quinquentonne. Among the ancient houses there, Nos. 4 and 2 have very deep cellars stretching beneath the street. In Rue Dussoubs, which under other names dates back to the fifteenth century, we see more quaint houses. At No. 26 Goldoni died. The short street Marie-Stuart recalls the days when for one brief year the beautiful Scotswoman was Queen Consort of France. The name of Rue Jussienne is a corruption of Marie l’Égyptienne, patron saint of a fourteenth-century chapel which stood there till 1791. At No. 2 lived Madame Dubarry after the death of Louis XV. Rue d’Argout dates as Rue des Vieux-Augustins from the thirteenth century. Here, at No. 28, lived in more modern times, Savalette de Langes, supposed for many years and proved at her death to be a man. In Passage du Vigan at No. 22, we find bas-reliefs in a courtyard. At No. 56, a small ancient hôtel.

Rue Bachaumont is on the site of the vanished Passage du Saumur, a milliner’s quarter, the most ancient of Paris passages, demolished in 1899. Rue d’Uzès crosses the site of the ancient hôtel d’Uzès. Rue de Cléry was till 1634 an ancient roadway. Madame de Pompadour was born here. Pierre Corneille and Casanava, the painter, lived here; and, where the street meets Rue Beauregard, Baron Batz made his frantic attempt to save Louis XVI on his way to the scaffold. No. 97, now a humble shop with the sign “Au poète de 1793,” was the home of André Chenier. Nos. 21-19 belonged to Robert Poquelin, the priest-brother of Molière, later to Pierre Lebrun, where in pre-Revolution days theatrical performances were given, and the Mass said secretly during the Terror. Leading out of Rue Cléry, we find Rue des Degrés, six mètres in length, the smallest street in Paris, a mere flight of steps.

Rue St-Sauveur (thirteenth century) memorizes the church once there. From end to end we see ancient houses, fine old balconies, curious signs, architectural features of interest. In Rue des Petits-Carreaux, running on from this end of Rue Montorgueil (see p. 40) we see at No. 16 the house where, till recent days, musicians assembled for hire each Sunday. Now they meet at the Café de la Chartreuse, 24, Boulevard St-Denis. In a house in a court where the house No. 26 now stands, lived Jean Dubarry. Rue Poissonnière, “Fishwives Street,” once “Champ des Femmes” (thirteenth century), shows us many ancient houses.

Rue Beauregard was so named in honour of the fine view Parisians had of old after mounting Rue Montorgueil. The notorious sorceress, Catherine Monvoisin—“la Voisin”—implicated in a thousand crimes, built for herself a luxurious habitation on this eminence—somewhat higher in those days than in later years. We find several ancient houses along this old street, notably No. 46. We see ancient houses also in Rue de la Lune (1630). No. 1 is a shop still famed for its brioches du soleil. Between these two streets stretched in olden days the graveyard of Notre-Dame de Bonne-Nouvelle, a church built in 1624 on the site of the ancient chapel Ste-Barbe. The name is said to refer to a piece of good news told to Anne d’Autriche one day as she passed that way. The tower only of the seventeenth-century church remains; the rest was rebuilt in 1823. Four short streets of ancient date cross Rue de la Lune: Rue Notre-Dame de Bonne-Nouvelle (eighteenth century), Rue Thorel (sixteenth century), the old Rue Ste-Barbe, Rue de la Ville-Neuve, Rue Notre-Dame de la Recouvrance—with old houses of interest in each. At No. 8 Rue de la Ville-Neuve we see médaillons of Jean Goujon and Philibert Delorme.

Surrounded by old streets, just off the boulevard des Italiens, is the Opéra-Comique, originally a Salle de Spectacles, built on the park-lands of their fine mansion by the duke and duchess de Choiseul, who reserved for themselves and their heirs for ever the right to a loge of eight seats next to the royal box. Its name, at first, Salle Favart, has changed many times. Burnt down twice, in 1838 and 1887, the present building dates only from 1898. Rue Favart, named after the eighteenth-century actor, has always been inhabited by actors and actresses. Rue de Grammont dates from 1726, built across the site of the fine old hôtel de Grammont. Rue de Choiseul, alongside the recently erected Crédit Lyonnais, which has replaced several ancient mansions, recalls the existence of another hôtel de Choiseul. At No. 21 we find curious old attics. Passing through the short Rue de Hanovre, we find in Rue de la Michodière, opened in 1778, on the grounds of hôtel Conti, the house (No. 8) where Gericault, the painter, lived in 1808, and at No. 19, the home of Casabianca, member of the Convention where Buonaparte, at one time, lodged. At No. 3, Rue d’Antin, then a private mansion, Buonaparte married Joséphine (9 March, 1796). Though serving as a banker’s office, the room where the marriage took place is kept exactly as it then was. In a house in Rue Louis-le-Grand, opened in 1701, known in Revolution days as Rue des Piques, Sophie Arnould was born. Rue Daunou, where at No. 1 we see an ancient escutcheon, leads us into the Rue de la Paix, opened in 1806 on the site of the ancient convent of the Capucines and called at first Rue Napoléon. All its fine houses are modern, as are also those of Rue Volney and Rue des Capucines, on the even number side. In the latter street, formed in the year 1700, the Crédit Foncier is the old hôtel de Castanier, director of the East India Company (1726), and the hôtel Devieux of the same date. Nos. 11, 9, 7, 5 (fine vestiges at No. 5) were the stables of the duchesse d’Orléans in 1730.

CHAPTER VI

ROUND ABOUT THE ARTS ET MÉTIERS (THE ARTS AND CRAFTS INSTITUTION)

ARRONDISSEMENT III. (TEMPLE)

A LONG stretch of the busy boulevard Sébastopol forms the boundary between arrondissements II and III. Several short old streets run between the Boulevard and Rue St-Martin. Rue Apolline (eighteenth century), Rue Blondel, Rue Notre-Dame de Nazareth, where curiously enough is a Jewish synagogue, show us some ancient houses. The latter, in the fifteenth century a roadway, in the seventeenth century a street along the course of a big drain, memorizes the convent once there. We find vestiges of an ancient hôtel at No. 6, and close by old passages: Passage du Vertbois, Passage des Quatre-Voleurs, Passage du Pont-aux-Biches. In Rue Papin we find the théâtre de la Gaîté, first set up at the Fair St-Laurent in the seventeenth century, here since 1861, when it was known as théâtre du Prince Impérial. Crossing Rue Turbigo, we reach Rue Bourg l’Abbé, reminding us of a very ancient street of the name swept away by the boulevard Sébastopol, and Rue aux Ours, dating from 1300, originally Rue aux Oies, referring maybe to geese roasted for the table when this was a street of turnspits. On the odd number side some ancient houses still stand. Rue Quincampoix, beginning far down in the 4th arrondissement, runs to its end into Rue aux Ours. It is through its whole course a street of old-time associations. In this bit of it we find interesting old houses, arched doorways, sculptured doors, etc., at Nos. 111, 99, 98, 96, 92, 91, 90. At No. 91 the watchman’s bell rang to bid the crowds disperse that pressed tumultuously round the offices of the great financier Law, who first set up his bank at the hôtel de Beaufort, on the site of the house No. 65. The Salle Molière was at No. 82, through the Passage Molière, dating from Revolution days, when it was known as Passage des Nourrices. The Salle began as the théâtre des Sans-Culottes, to become later the théâtre École. There Rachel made her debut. Many traces of the old theatre are still seen.

The old Roman road Rue St-Martin coming northward through the 4th arrondissement enters the 3rd from Rue Rambuteau. Along its entire course it is rich in old-world vestiges: ancient mansions, old signs, venerable sculptures, bas-reliefs, etc. In the Passage de l’Ancre, opening at No. 223, the first office for cab-hiring was opened in 1637. At No. 254 we come to the old church St-Nicolas-des-Champs, originally a chapel in the fields forming part of the abbey lands of St-Martin-des-Champs, subsequently the parish church of the district, rebuilt at the beginning of the fifteenth century, enlarged towards the end of the sixteenth century—a beautiful edifice in Gothic style of two different periods and known as the church of a hundred columns. The sacristy, once the presbytery, and a sundial dating from 1666, front the old Rue Cunin-Gridaine. Crossing Rue Réaumur, we reach the fine old abbey buildings which since the Revolution have served as the Paris Arts and Crafts Institution. The Abbey was built on the spot beyond the Paris boundary where St. Martin, on his way to the city, is said to have healed a leper. The invading Normans knocked it down; it was rebuilt in 1056 and the Abbey grounds surrounded a few years afterwards by high walls, rebuilt later as strong fortifications with eighteen turrets. Part of those walls and a restored tower are seen at No. 7 Rue Bailly. Within the walls were the Abbey chapel, long, beautiful cloisters, a prison, a market, etc. In the fourteenth century the Abbey was included within the city bounds and the monks held their own till 1790. In 1798, the disaffected Abbey buildings were chosen wherein to place the models collected by Vaucanson—pioneer of machinists; other collections were added and in the century following various changes and additions made in the old Abbey structure.

The big door giving on Rue St-Martin dates only from 1850. The great flight of steps in the court, built first in 1786, was remodelled and modernized in 1860. The ancient cloisters, remodelled, have been for years past the scene of busy mechanical and industrial study. The ancient and beautiful refectory, the work of Pierre de Montereau, architect of the Sainte-Chapelle (see p. 48) has become the Library. Beneath the fine vaulted roof, amid tall, slender columns of exquisite workmanship, students read where monks of old took their meals. The old Abbey chapel (twelfth and thirteenth centuries) restored in the nineteenth century, serves as the depot for models of steam-engines, etc. A small Gothic chapel is in the hands of a gas company. Other venerable portions of the Abbey, fallen into ruin, have quite recently been removed.

Rue Vertbois, on the northern side of the institution, records the existence of a leafy wood in the old Abbey grounds. The tower dates from 1140, the fountain from 1712; both were restored at the end of the nineteenth century. Going on up this old street we find numerous traces of what were erewhile the Abbey precincts.

Porte St-Martin at the angle where the rue meets the boulevard is that last of three great portes moving northward, and each in its time marking the city boundary.

Rue Meslay, opening out of Rue St-Martin at this point, dates from the first years of the eighteenth century, when it was Rue du Rempart. No. 49 was the home of the last Commandant du Guet. At No. 46 Aurore Dupin, known as George Sand, the famous novelist, was born in 1804. At No. 40 we see the fine old hôtel, with a fountain in the court, where in eighteenth-century days dwelt the Commandant de la Garde de Paris, the garde having replaced the guet (the Watch) in 1771.

Rue Beaubourg, stretching from Rue Rambuteau to Rue Turbigo, and the streets and passages leading out of it, show us many traces of bygone times. At No. 28 we find subterranean halls, with hooks where iron chains were once held fast—for this was an ancient prison—and a salon Louis XVI, with traces of ancient frescoes and sculpture. The city wall of Philippe-Auguste passed where the house No. 39 now stands. At No. 62, opposite which stretched the graveyard of St-Nicolas-des-Champs, was the palace of the bishops of Châlons, taken later to form part of a Carmelite convent suppressed in 1793. In a later revolutionary period—when Louis-Philippe was on the throne of France—the Paris insurrections centred here and horrible scenes took place on this spot [B].

In Rue au Maire, a secular official, mayor or bailiff of the Abbey, had his seat of office. In the Passage des Marmites (Saucepan Street) dwelt none but chaudronniers (coppersmiths and tinkers). We see ancient houses all along Rue Volta, and Rue des Vertus, so called by derision, having been the Rue des Vices, is made up of quaint old houses. Most of the houses, rather sordid, in Rue des Gravilliers, are ancient. No. 44 is said to have been the meeting-place of the secret Society “l’Internationale” in the time of Napoléon III. At Nos. 69 and 70 we see traces of the hôtel built by the grandfather of Gabrielle d’Estrées. At No. 88 the accomplices of Cadoudal, of the infernal machine conspiracy, were arrested.

Rue Chapon, formerly Capon, is named from the Capo, i.e. the cape worn by the Jews who in thirteenth-century days were its chief inhabitants. Its western end, known till 1851 as Rue du Cimetière St-Nicolas-des-Champs, shows many vestiges of past time. No. 16 was the hôtel of Madame de Mandeville, at first a nun-novice, to become in the time of Louis XV a celebrated courtesan. No. 13 was the hôtel of the archbishops of Reims, then of the bishops of Châlons, ceded in 1619 to the Carmelites. A big door and other interesting vestiges remain.

Rue de Montmorency is named from the fine old hôtel at No. 5, where the Montmorency lived from 1215 to 1627, when the last descendant of the famous Constable Mathieu perished on the scaffold. The street is rich in historic houses, historic associations. The stretch between Rue Beaubourg and Rue du Temple was known till 1768 as Rue Courtauvillain, originally Cour-au-Vilains—the Vilains, not necessarily “villains,” were the serfs or “common people” of bygone days. There lived Madame de Sévigné before making hôtel Carnavalet her home. No. 51 is the Maison du Grand Pignon, the big gable, owned, about the year 1407, by Nicolas Flamel and his wife Pernelle. Nicolas was a reputed schoolmaster of the age who made a good thing out of his establishment and was cited as having discovered the philosopher’s stone. On his death, he bequeathed his house and all his goods to the church St-Jacques-la-Boucherie, of which la Tour St-Jacques alone remains (see pp. 95, 97).

Rue Grenier-St-Lazare, in the thirteenth century Rue Garnier de St-Ladre, shows us interesting old houses, and at No. 4 a Louis XVI staircase.

Rue Michel-le-Comte, another street of ancient houses, erewhile hôtels of the noblesse, reminds one of the popular punning phrase, “Ça fait la Rue Michel,” i.e. ça fait le compte—Michel-le-Comte. No. 28 was at one time inhabited by comte Esterhazy, Hungarian Ambassador. Impasse de Clairvaux, Rue du Maure (fourteenth century, known at one time as Cour des Anglais), and Rue Brantôme make a cluster of ancient streets, with many vestiges of past ages.

CHAPTER VII

THE TEMPLE

OF the renowned citadel and domain of mediæval times, from which the arrondissement takes its name, nothing now remains. A modern square (1865) has been arranged on the site of the mansion and the gardens of the Grand Prieur, but the surrounding streets, several stretching where the Temple once stood and across the site of its extensive grounds, show us historic houses, historic vestiges and associations along their entire course.

The Knights-Templar settled in Paris in 1148. Their domain with its dungeon, built in 1212, its manor and fortified tower, and the vast surrounding grounds, were seized in 1307 and given over to the knights of St. John of Jerusalem, known later as the knights of Malta. From that time to the Revolution the Temple was closely connected with the life of the city. The primitive buildings were demolished, streets built along the site of some of them in the seventeenth century, and an immense battlemented castle with towers and a strong prison erected where the original stronghold had stood. The Temple, as then built, was like the old abbeys and royal palaces: a sort of township, having within its enclosures all that was needful for the daily life of its inhabitants. Besides Louis XVI and his family many persons of note passed weary days in its prison. Sidney Smith effected his escape therefrom. Its encircling walls were razed in the first years of the nineteenth century; and in 1808 Napoléon had the great tower knocked down. In 1814 the Allies made the Grand Priory their headquarters. Louis XVIII gave over the mansion to an Order of Benedictine nuns. In 1848 it served as a barracks. Its end came in 1854, when it was razed to the ground. Then a big place and market hall were set up on the site of the old Temple chapel and its adjacent buildings—a famous market, given up in great part to dealers in second-hand goods—the chief Paris market of occasions (bargains). The Rotonde which had been erected in 1781 was allowed to stand and lasted till 1863. A new ironwork hall, built in 1855, was not demolished till recent years—1905.

Those pretty, gay knick-knacks, that glittering cheap jewellery known throughout the world as “articles de Paris” had their origin among a special class of the inhabitants of the old Temple grounds. No one living there paid taxes. Impecunious persons of varying rank sought asylum there—a society made up in great part of artists and artistically-minded artisans. To gain their daily bread they set their wits and their fingers to work and soon found a ready sale for their Brummagem—not mere Brummagem, however, and all of truly Parisian delicacy of conception and workmanship.

Starting up Rue du Temple, from Rue Rambuteau, this part of it before 1851 Rue Ste-Avoie, we come upon the passage Ste-Avoie, and the entrance to the demolished hôtel, once that of Constable Anne de Montmorency, later, for a time, the Law’s famous bank. At No. 71 we see l’hôtel de St-Aignan, built in 1660, used in 1812 as a mairie, with fine doors and Corinthian pilastres in the court. No. 79 was l’hôtel de Montmort (1650). No. 86 is on the site of a famous cabaret of the days of Louis XII. At Nos. 101-103 we see vestiges of l’hôtel de Montmorency. No. 113 was the dependency of a Carmelite convent. At No. 122 Balzac lived in 1882. At No. 153 was the eighteenth-century bureau des Vinaigrettes—Sedan-chairs on wheels. The great door of the Temple, demolished in 1810, stood opposite No. 183. Vestiges were found in recent years beneath the pavement. At No. 195, within the Église Ste-Elisabeth, originally the convent chapel of the Filles de Ste-Elisabeth (1614-1690), we see most beautiful woodwork. Rue Turbigo cut right through the ancient presbytère.

Turning back down this old street to visit the streets leading out of it, we find Rue Dupetit-Thouars, on the site of old hôtels within the Temple grounds. Rue de la Corderie, where the Communards met in 1871. Rue des Fontaines (fifteenth century), with at No. 7 the ancient hôtellerie du Grand Cerf: at No. 15 the hôtel owned by the Superior of the convent of the Madelonnettes—a house of Mercy—suppressed at the Revolution, used as a political prison, later as a woman’s prison. Rue Perrée, where a shadowy Temple market is still to be seen, runs through the ancient Temple grounds.

Rue de Bretagne stretches from the Rue de Réaumur at the corner of the Temple Square, in old days known in its course through the Temple property as Rue de Bourgogne, farther on as Rue de Saintonge; leading out of it, at No. 62, the short Rue de Caffarelli runs along the line of the eastern wall of the vanished Temple fortress; at No. 45 is the Rue de Beauce where we come upon the ancient private passage, Rue des Oiseaux, with its vacherie of the old hospice des Enfants-Rouges. At No. 48 opens the ancient Rue du Beaujolais-du-Temple, renamed Rue de Picardie. At No. 41 we find the Marché des Enfants-Rouges, a picturesque old-time market hall with an ancient well in the courtyard. Rue Portefoin, thirteenth century. Rue Pastourelle, of the same epoch where at No. 23 lived the culottier, Biard, who wrote the Revolutionary song: la Carmagnole. Rue des Haudriettes, known in past days as Rue de l’Échelle-du-Temple, for there at its farther end was the Temple pillory and a tall ladder reaching to its summit. The name Haudriette is that of the order of nuns founded by Jean Haudri, secretary to Louis IX, who, given up by his wife as lost while travelling in the East, returned at length to find her living among a community of widows to whom she had made over her home. Haudri maintained the institution thus founded, which was removed later to a mansion, now razed, near the chapel of the Assumption, in Rue St-Honoré. Rue de Brague, until 1348 Rue Boucherie-du-Temple, the Templars meat market. The fine old hôtel at Nos. 4 and 6 has ceilings painted by Lebrun. All these streets are rich in old-time houses, old-time vestiges, and they are all, as is the whole of this arrondissement on this side Rue du Temple as far as Rue de Turenne, in the Marais, a name referring to the marshy nature of the district in long-past days—but which was for long in pre-Revolution times the most aristocratic quarter of the city. We find ourselves now before the Archives and the Imprimerie Nationale, the latter to be transferred to its new quarters Rue de la Convention. The frontage of this fine old building and its entrance gates give on the Rue des Francs-Bourgeois, of which more anon (see p. 84). On the western side we see a thick high wall and the Gothic doorway of what was, in the fourteenth century, the Paris dwelling of the redoubtable Constable, Olivier de Clisson, subsequently for nearly two hundred years in the hands of the Guise. In 1687 it was rebuilt for the Princess de Soubise by the architect, Delamair. Pillaged during the Revolution, it became national property, and in 1808 the Archives were placed there by Napoléon. Frescoes, fine old woodwork, magnificent mouldings, architectural work of great beauty are there to be seen. The Duke of Clarence is said to have made the hôtel Clisson his abode during the English occupation under Henry V. Going up Rue des Archives we see at No. 53, dating from 1705, the hôtel built there by the Prince de Rohan, and onward up the street fine old mansions, once the homes of men and women of historic name and fame. No. 72 is said to have been the “Archives” in the time of Louis XIII. An eighteenth-century fountain is seen in the yard behind the stationer’s shop there. No. 78 was the hôtel of Maréchal de Tallard. No. 79 dates from Louis XIII. At No. 90 we see traces of the old chapel of the Orphanage des Enfants-Rouges, so called from the colour of the children’s uniform. The eastern side of the Imprimerie Nationale adjoining the Archives, built by Delamair, as the hôtel de Strasbourg, and commonly known as hôtel de Rohan, because four comtes de Rohan were successively bishops of Strasbourg, is bounded by Rue Vieille-du-Temple, that too along its whole course a sequence of old houses bearing witness to past grandeur. No. 54 is the picturesque house and turret built in 1528 by Jean de la Balue, secretary to the duc d’Orléans. No. 56 was once the abode of Loys de Villiers of the household of Isabeau de Bavière. No. 75 was the town house of the family de la Tour-du-Pin-Gouvernet (1720). On the walls of No. 80 we read the old inscription “Vieille rue du Temple.” No. 102 was the hôtel de Caumartin, later d’Epernon. Nos. 106 and 110 were dependencies of the hôtel d’Epernon.

Rue des Quatre-Fils on the north side of the Archives and its adjoining buildings, known in past times as Rue de l’Échelle-du-Temple, recalls to mind the romantic adventures of four sons of a certain Aymon, sung by a thirteenth-century troubadour. Most of its houses are ancient. Leading out of it is the old Rue Charlot with numerous seventeenth-century and eighteenth-century houses or vestiges. We peep into the Ruelle Sourdis, a gutter running down the middle of it, once shut in by iron gates and boundary stones. At No. 5 we see what remains of the hôtel Sourdis, which in 1650 belonged to Cardinal Retz. The church St-Jean-St-François, opposite, is the ancient chapel of the convent St-François-des-Capucins du Marais. It replaced the old church St-Jean-en-Grève, destroyed at the Revolution, and here we see, surrounding the nave, painted copies of ancient tapestries telling the story of the miracle of the sacred Hostie which a Jew in mockery sought to destroy by burning. The fête of Reparation kept from the fourteenth century at the church of St-Jean and at the chapel les Billettes (see p. 107) has since 1867 been kept here. Here too, piously preserved, is the chasuble used by the Abbé Edgeworth at the last Mass heard before his execution by Louis XVI in the Temple prison hard by. In the short Rue du Perche behind the church, lived for a time at No. 7 bis Scarron’s young widow, destined to become Madame de Maintenon. Fine frescoes cover several of its ceilings. In Rue de Poitou we find more interesting old houses. In Rue de Normandie Nos. 10, 6, 9 show interesting features, old courtyards, etc. Turning from Rue Charlot into Rue Béranger, known until 1864 by the name of the Grand Prior of the Temple de Vendôme, we find the hôtel de Vendôme, Nos. 5 and 3, dating from 1752 where Béranger lived and died. At No. 11, now a business house, lived Berthier de Sauvigny, Intendant-Général de Paris in 1789, hung on a lamp-post after the taking of the Bastille, one of the first victims of the Revolution.

Running parallel to Rue Charlot, starting from the little Rue du Perche, Rue Saintonge, formed by joining two seventeenth-century streets, Rue Poitou and Rue Touraine, shows us a series of ancient dwellings. From October, 1789, to 15th July, 1791, Robespierre lived at No. 64. A fine columned entrance court at No. 5 has been supplanted by a brand-new edifice. The hôtel at No. 4, dating originally from about 1611, was rebuilt in 1745.

Rue de Turenne, running in this arrondissement from Rue Charlot to the corner of the Place des Vosges, began as Rue Louis, then in its upper part was Rue Boucherat, as an ancient inscription at No. 133 near the fountain Boucherat records. From the old street whence it starts, Rue St.-Antoine in the 4th arrondissement, it is a long line of ancient hôtels, the homes in bygone days of men of notable names and doings; one side of the convent des Filles-du-Calvaire stretched between the Rue des Filles-du-Calvaire and Rue Pont-au-Choux. No. 76 was the home of the last governor of the Bastille, Monsieur de Launay. The church of St-Denis-du-St-Sacrament at No. 70 was built in 1835 on the site of the chapel of a convent razed in 1826, previously a mansion of Maréchal de Turenne. At No. 56, Scarron lived and died. No. 54 was the abode of the comte de Montrésor, noted in the wars of the Fronde. At No. 41, fresh water flows from the fontaine de Joyeuse on the site of the ancient hôtel de Joyeuse. We find a beautiful staircase in almost every one of these old hôtels.

Rue du Parc-Royal, memorizes the park and palace of Les Tournelles, razed to the ground after the tragic death of Henri II by his widow, Catherine de’ Medici (see p. 8). No. 4, dating from 1620, was inhabited by successive illustrious families until the early years of the nineteenth century. There, till recently, was seen a wonderful carved wood staircase. Many of the ancient houses erewhile here have been demolished in recent years, and are supplanted by modern buildings and a garden-square.

CHAPTER VIII

THE HOME OF MADAME DE SÉVIGNÉ

WE are now in the vicinity of that most entrancing of historic museums, Musée Carnavalet, and its neighbouring library. On the wall of Rue de Sévigné is still to be read engraved in the stonework its more ancient name, Rue de la Culture-Ste-Catherine, so called because it ran across cultivated land in the vicinity of an ancient church dedicated to St. Catherine. It was in 1677 that Madame de Sévigné and her daughter, Madame de Grignan, settled in the first story of the house No. 23, built some hundred and thirty years before by Jacques de Ligneri under the direction of the renowned architect Pierre Lescot and the sculptor Jean Goujon. The widow of a Breton lord, Kernevenoy, or some such word by name, which resolved itself into Carnavalet, bought the hôtel from the Ligneri; inhabitants and owners changed as time went on, but this name remained. At the Revolution, the mansion was taken possession of by the State, was used for a school, to become after 1871 the historical Museum of Paris. In 1898 the museum was taken in hand by M. Georges Cain and from that day to this has been continually added to, made more and more valuable and attractive by this eminently capable administrator. To study the history, and learn “from the life” the story of Paris and of France, go to the Musée Carnavalet. And to read about all you see there, turn at No. 29 into the Bibliothèque de la Ville. In olden days le Petit Arsenal de la Ville stood on the site. The edifice we see, l’hôtel St-Fargeau, was built in 1687. The city library, which had been re-organized by Jules Cousin, was placed there in 1898.

Rue Payenne runs across the site of ancient houses and of part of two convents, a door of one is seen at that regrettably modern-style erection, so out of keeping with its surroundings, the Lycée Victor-Hugo. At No. 5 we see a bust of Auguste Compte, with an inscription, for this was the “Temple of the religion of Humanity,” and Compte’s friend and inspirer Clotilde de Vaux died here. Here souvenirs of the philosopher are kept in a memorial chapel. Nos. 11 and 13 formed the mansion of the duc de Lude, one of the most noted admirers of Madame de Sévigné, Grand Maître d’Artillerie in 1675, and was inhabited at one time by Madame Scarron. In Rue Elzévir—in the sixteenth century Rue des Trois-Pavillons—was born Marion Delorme (1613). Ninon de Lenclos lived here in 1642. We see a fine old house at No. 8, and at No. 2 l’hôtel de Lusignan. Leading out of Rue Elzévir, the old Rue Barbette records the name of a master of the Mint under Philippe-le-Bel, and a house he built with extensive gardens, known as the Courtille Barbette; the Courtille was destroyed by the populace, displeased at a change in the coinage, in 1306; the house remained and became a rendezvous of courtiers, passed into the hands of the extremely light-lived Isabeau de Bavière, who inaugurated there her wonderful bals masqués. It was on leaving the hôtel Barbette that the duc d’Orléans, Isabeau’s lover, was assassinated, on the threshold of a neighbouring house, by the men of Jean Sans Peur, 23 November, 1407 (see p. 40). The mansion passed subsequently through many hands, and was finally in part demolished in 1563, and this street cut across the ground where it had stood. No. 8 was the “petit hôtel” of Maréchal d’Estrées, brother of Gabrielle, confiscated at the Revolution and made later the mother-house of the Institution “la Legion d’Honneur” for the education of officer’s daughters. The grand old mansion has been despoiled of its splendid decorations, precious woodwork, etc.—all sold peacemeal for high prices. Almost every house in this old street is an ancient hôtel. No. 14 was the hôtel Bigot de Chorelle, No. 16 the hôtel de Choisy, No. 18 the hôtel Massu, No. 17 the hôtel de Brégis, etc. We see other ancient houses in Rue de la Perle. At No. 1, dating from the close of the seventeenth century, we find wonderfully interesting things in the courtyard; busts of old Romans, fine bas-reliefs, etc.

Rue de Thorigny, sixteenth century, was named after Président Lambert de Thorigny, whose descendants built, a century or two later, the fine hôtel Lambert on l’Ile St-Louis. Marion died in a house in this street; Madame de Sévigné lived here at one time, as did Balzac in 1814. The fine hôtel at No. 5 goes by the name hôtel Salé, because its owner, Aubert de Fontenay, had grown rich through the Gabelle (salt-tax). Later it was the abode of Monseigneur Juigné, Archbishop of Paris, who in the terrible winter 1788-89 gave all he possessed to assuage the misery of the people, yet met his death by stoning on the outbreak of the Revolution. Confiscated by the State, the fine old mansion was for a time put to various uses; then bought and its beauties reverently guarded by its present owners. Rue Debelleyme, made up of four short ancient streets, shows interesting vestiges. The nineteenth-century novelist, Eugène Sue, lived here.

To the east of Rue de Turenne, at its junction with Rue des Francs-Bourgeois, we find old streets across the site of the ancient palace des Tournelles; of the palace no trace remains save the name of the old Rue des Tournelles. Rue du Foin runs where hay was once made in the fields of the palace park. Rue de Béarn was in olden times Rue du Parc-Royal. Here we find vestiges of the convent des Minimes, founded by Marie de’ Medici in 1611, suppressed in 1790. Some of its walls form part of the barracks we see there, and the cloister still stands intact in the courtyard, while at No. 10, Rue des Minimes, may be seen the old convent door. The building No. 7 of this latter street, now a school, dates from the seventeenth century. A famous chestnut-tree, several hundred years old, flourished in the court at No. 14 till a few years ago. In Rue St-Gilles, we see among other ancient houses the Pavilion of the hôtel Morangis, No. 22, and at No. 12, the Cour de Venise. In Rue Villehardouin, when it was Rue des Douze Portes, to which Rue St-Pierre was joined at its change of name, lived Scarron and his young wife. Rue des Tournelles with its strikingly old-world aspect shows us two houses inhabited by Ninon de Lenclos, Nos. 56 and 26, and at No. 58, that of Locré, who with some other men of law drew up the famous Code Napoléon.

At No. 1, Rue St-Claude, one side of the house in Rue des Arquebusiers, dwelt the notorious sorcerer, Joseph Balsamo, known as comte de Cagliostro. The iron balustrade dates from his day and the heavy handsome doors came from the ancient Temple buildings. Rue Pont-au-Choux recalls the days when the land was a stretch of market gardens. Rue Froissard and Rue de Commines lie on the site of the razed couvent des Filles-du-Calvaire, of which vestiges are to be seen on the boulevard at No. 13.

CHAPTER IX

NOTRE-DAME

ARRONDISSEMENT IV. (HÔTEL-DE-VILLE)

RUE LUTÈCE, the French form of the Roman word Lutetia, recording the ancient name of the city, is a modern street on ancient historic ground. There, on the river island, the first settlers pitched their camp, reared their rude dwellings, laid the foundation of the city of mud to become in future days the city of light, the brilliant Ville Lumière. When the conquering Romans took possession of the primitive city and built there its first palace, the island of the Seine became l’Île du Palais.

Of the buildings erected there through succeeding centuries, few traces now remain. But Roman walls in perfect condition were discovered beneath the surface of the island so recently as 1906. Close to the site of Rue Lutèce ran, until the middle of last century, the ancient Rue des Fèves, where was the famous Taverne de la Pomme de Pin, a favourite meeting-place from the time of Molière of great men of letters. Crossing Rue de la Cité, formed in 1834 along the line of the old Rue St-Éloi which stretched where Degobert’s great statesman had founded the abbey St-Martial, we come to the Parvis Notre-Dame. The Parvis, so wide and open to-day, was until very recent times—well into the second half of the nineteenth century—crowded with buildings; old shops, old streets, erections connected with the old Hôtel-Dieu, covered in great part the space before the Cathedral, now an open square. The statue of Charlemagne we see there is modern, set up in 1882.

The Cathedral, beloved and venerated by Parisians from all time—“Sacra sancta ecclesia civitatis Parisiensis”—stands upon the site of two ancient churches which in early ages together formed the Episcopal church of the capital of France. One bore the name of the martyr, St. Stephen, the other was dedicated to Ste-Marie.

These churches stood on the site of a pre-Christian place of worship, a temple of Mars or Jupiter: Roman remains of great extent were found beneath the pavements when clearing away the ancient buildings on the Parvis. Fire wrought havoc on both churches, entirely destroyed one, and towards the year 1162 Sully set about the erection of a church worthy of the capital of his country. Its first stone was laid by the Guelph refugee, Pope Alexander III, in 1163. The chancel, the nave and the façade were finished without undue delay, and in 1223 the whole of the beautiful Gothic building was finished; alterations were made during the years that followed until about 1300. From that time onward Notre-Dame was made a store-house of things beautiful. The finest pictures of each succeeding age lined its walls—at length so thickly that there was room for no more. Much beautiful old work, including a fine rood screen, was carted away under Louis XIV, when space was wanted for the immense statue of the Virgin set up then in fulfilment of the vow of Louis XIII, destroyed later. The figures on the great doors, we see to-day, are modern: the original statuettes were hacked to pieces at the outbreak of the Revolution by the mob who mistook the Kings of Israel for the Kings of France!

The flêche, too, is of latter-day construction, built by Viollet le Duc, to replace the ancient turret bell-tower. Destruction and desecration of every kind fell upon the Cathedral in Revolution days. Priceless glass was smashed, magnificent work of every sort ruthlessly torn down, trampled in the dust. On the Parvis—the space before the Cathedral doors where in long-gone ages the mystery plays were acted—a great bonfire was made of all the Mass books and Bibles, etc., found within the sacred edifice: priceless illuminated missals, etc., perished then. Marvellous woodwork, glorious stained-glass windows, fine statuary happily still remain.

From the time of its erection, the grand Cathedral was closely connected with the greatest historical events of France, just as the church built by Childebert and the older church of St-Étienne had been before. St. Louis was buried there in 1271. The first States-General was held there in 1302. There Henry VI of England was crowned King of France in 1431, and Marie-Stuart crowned Queen Consort in 1560. Henri IV heard his first Mass there in 1694. Within the sacred walls the Revolutionists set up the worship of reason, held sacrilegious fêtes. Napoléon I was crowned there and was there married to Marie Louise of Austria. Napoléon III’s wedding took place there. These are some only singled out from a long list of historical associations. National Te Deums, Requiems, Services of Reparation all take place at this Sancta Ecclesia Parisionis.

The Hôtel-Dieu on the north side of the Parvis is the modern hospital raised on the site of the ancient Paris House of God, the hospital for the Paris poor built in the thirteenth century, always in close connection with the Cathedral and having its annexe across the little bridge St-Charles, a sort of covered gallery. Those blackened walls stood till 1909.

Rue du Cloître Notre-Dame belonged in past ages to the Cathedral Chapter, a cloistered thoroughfare. Its fifty-one houses have almost entirely disappeared. Three still stand: Nos. 18, 16, 14. Pierre Lescot, the notable sixteenth-century architect, to whom a canonry was given, died there in 1578. Rue Chanoinesse is still inhabited by the Cathedral canons. Its houses are all ancient. At No. 10 lived Fulbert, the uncle of the beautiful Héloïse, who braved his anger for the sake of Abelard, who lived and taught hard by. Racine is said to have lived at No. 16. The old Tour de Dagobert, which did not, however, date back quite to that monarch’s time, stood at No. 18 till 1908. Its wonderful staircase, formed of a single oak-tree, is at the Musée Cluny. Lacordaire is said to have lodged at No. 17. A curious old courtyard at No. 20. At No. 24, vestiges of the old chapel St-Aignan (twelfth century). At 26, a passage with old pillars and paved with old tombstones. Leading out of it runs the little Rue des Chantres where the choristers lived and worked to perfect their voices and their knowledge of music. Rue Massillon is entirely made of old houses with most interesting features—a marvellous carved oak staircase at No. 6, fine doors, curious courtyards. Another beautiful staircase at No. 4. In Rue des Ursins, connected with Rue Chanoinesse, we find many ancient houses. At No. 19 we see vestiges of the old chapel where Mass was said secretly during the Revolution by priests who went there disguised as workmen.

Rue de la Colombe, where we find an inscription referring to the discovery there of Roman remains, dates from the early years of the thirteenth century.

CHAPTER X

L’ÎLE ST-LOUIS

CROSSING the bridge painted of yore bright red and known therefore as le Pont-Rouge, we find ourselves upon the Île St-Louis, in olden days two distinct islands: l’Île Notre-Dame and l’Île-aux-Vaches, both uninhabited until the early years of the seventeenth century. Tradition says the law-duels known as jugements de Dieu took place there. The Chapter of Notre-Dame had certain rights over the island.

In the seventeenth century, consent was given for the Île St-Louis to be built upon, and the official constructor of Ponts and Chaussées obtained the concession of the two islets under the stipulation that he should fill up the brook which separated them, and make a bridge across the arm of the Seine to the city quay. The brook became Rue Poulletier, where we see interesting vestiges of that day and two ancient hôtels, Nos. 3 and 20—the latter now a school.

All along Rue St-Louis-en-l’Île and in the streets connected with it, fine old mansions, or beautiful vestiges of the buildings then erected, still stand. The church we see there was begun by Le Vau in 1664, on the site of a chapel built at his own expense by one Nicolas-le-Jeune. The curious belfry dates from 1741. The church is a very store-house of works of art, many of them by the great masters of old, put there by its vicar, Abbé Bossuet, who devoted his whole fortune and his untiring energy to the work of restoring the church left in ruins after its despoliation at the Revolution, and died so poor in consequence as to be buried by the parish. At No. 1 of this quaint street we find a pavilion of l’hôtel de Bretonvilliers of which an arch is seen at No. 7, and other vestiges at Nos. 5 and 3. The Arbalétriers were wont to meet here in pre-Revolution days. No. 2, its northern front giving on Quai d’Anjou (see p. 328), is the grand mansion of Nicolas Lambert de Thorigny, built by Le Vau, 1680; its splendid decorations are the work of Lebrun and other noted artists and sculptors of the time. In 1843 it was bought by the family of a Polish prince and used in part as an orphanage for the daughters of Polish exiles till 1899.

CHAPTER XI

L’HÔTEL DE VILLE AND ITS SURROUNDINGS

THE Hôtel de Ville, which gives its name to the arrondissement, is a modern erection built as closely as possible on the plan and from the designs of the fine Renaissance structure of the sixteenth century burnt to the ground by the Communards in 1871. Place de l’Hôtel de Ville, where it stands, was until 1830 Place de Grève, the Place du Port de Grève of anterior days, days going back to Roman times. Like the Paris Cathedral, the hôtel de Ville is closely linked with the most marked events of French history. The first hôtel de Ville was known as la Maison-aux-Piliers, previously l’hôtel des Dauphins du Viennois, bought in 1357 by Étienne Marcel, Prévôt des Marchands, of historic memory (see p. 39), whose statue we see in the garden. The first stone of the fine building burnt in 1871 was laid by François I in 1533, its last one in the time of Henri IV. On the Square before it executions took place, for offences criminal, political, religious, by burning, strangling, hanging and the guillotine. In its centre stood a tall Gothic cross reared upon eight steps, at the foot of which the condemned said their last prayers. The guillotine first set up there in 1792 was soon moved about, as we know, to different points of the city, when used for political victims. Common-law criminals continued to expiate their evil deeds on Place de Grève. It was a comparatively small place in those days. Its enlargement in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries caused the destruction of many old streets, in one of which was the famous Maison de la Lanterne. Close up against the Hôtel de Ville stood in past days the old church St-Jean-en-Grève and a hospice; both were incorporated in the town hall by Napoléon I. The entire building was destroyed in 1871, but the present structure is remarkably fine in every part, both within and without, and the Salle St-Jean, memorizing the church once there, is splendidly decorated. The Avenue Victoria, on the site of ancient streets, memorizes the visit of the English Queen in 1855. The short Rue de la Tâcherie (from tâche: task, work) crossing it, was in the thirteenth century Rue de la Juiverie, for here we are in the neighbourhood of what is still the Jews’ quarter.

A modern garden-square surrounds the beautiful Tour St-Jacques, all that is left of the ancient church St-Jacques-la-Boucherie, built in the fifteenth century, on the site of a chapel of the eighth century, finished in the sixteenth, entirely restored in the nineteenth century and again recently. It is used as an observatory. Paris weather statistics hail from la Tour St-Jacques.

On the site of the modern Place du Châtelet rose in bygone ages the primitive tower of the Grand Châtelet, which developed under Louis-le-Gros into a strongly fortified castle and prison guarding the bridge across the Seine to the right, while the Petit Châtelet guarded it on the left bank. A chandelle—a flaming tallow candle—set up by command of Philippe-le-Long near its doorway, is said to be the origin of the lighting, dim enough as it was for centuries, of Paris streets. The fortress was rebuilt by Louis XIV; part of it served as the Morgue until it was razed to the ground in 1802. The fountain plays where the prison once stood. Numerous old streets lead out of the modern Rue de Rivoli at this point. Rue Nicolas-Flamel, running where good Nicolas had a fine hôtel in the early years of the fifteenth century, and Rue Pernelle recording the name of his wife, have existed under other names from the thirteenth century. Rue St-Bon recalls the chapel on the spot in still earlier times.

Rue St-Martin beginning at Quai des Gesvres, the high road to the north of Roman days, after cutting through Avenue Victoria, crosses Rue de Rivoli at this point, and here was the first of the four Portes which in succession marked the city boundary on this side. The beautiful sixteenth-century church we see here, St-Merri, stands on the site of a chapel built in the seventh century. In a Gothic crypt remains of its patron saint who lived and died on the spot are reverently guarded, and the bones of Eudes the Falconer, the redoubtable warrior who dowered the church, discovered in perfect preservation in a stone coffin in the time of François I, lie in the choir. It is a wonderfully interesting structure, with fine glass, woodwork, mouldings, statues and statuettes. The statuettes we see on the walls of the porch are comparatively modern, replacing the ancient ones destroyed at the Revolution.

Rue de la Verrerie bordering the southern walls of the church and running on almost to Rue Vieille-du-Temple, dates from the twelfth century and reminds us by its name of the glaziers and glass painters’ Company, developed from the confraternity which in 1187 made the old street its quarter. Louis XIV, finding this a convenient road on the way to Vincennes, had it enlarged. There dwelt Jacquemin Gringonneur, who, it is said, invented playing cards for the distraction of the insane King Charles VI. Bossuet’s father and many other persons of position or repute lived in the old houses which remain or in others on the site of the more modern ones. At No. 76 was the hôtel inhabited by Suger, the Minister of Louis VI and Louis VII; part of its ancient walls were incorporated in the church in the sixteenth century. Here, too, is the presbytery, where in the courtyard we find a wonderful old spiral staircase, its summit higher than the church roof. Old streets and passages wind in and out around the church. Exploring them, we come upon interesting vestiges innumerable. The ancient clergy house is at No. 76, Rue St-Martin. Rue Cloître-St-Merri, Rue Taille-pain, Rue Brise-Miche, these two referring to the bakery once there and bread portioned out, cut or broken for the Clergy; Rue St-Merri and its old passage, Impasse du Bœuf, with its eighteenth-century grille; Rue Pierre-au-lard, a humorous adaptation of the name Pierre Aulard, borne by a notable parishioner of the eighteenth century. Passage Jabach on the site of the home of the rich banker of the seventeenth century whose fine collection of pictures were the nucleus of the treasures of the Louvre. Impasse St-Fiacre, the word saint cut away at the Revolution, where dwelt the first hirer-out of cabs; hence the term fiacre. Rue de la Reynie (thirteenth century), renamed in memory of the Lieutenant-General of Police who, in 1669, ordered the lighting of Paris streets, but did not provide lamplighters. Private citizens were bound daily to light and extinguish the lanterns then placed at the end and in the middle of each thoroughfare. Everyone of these streets, dull and grimy though they be, are full of interest for the explorer. Going on up Rue St-Martin, we see on both sides numerous features of interest. Look at Nos. 97, 100, 103, 104; and at No. 116, called Maison des Goths, with its fine old frieze. At No. 120 there are two storeyed cellars and in one of them a well. The fontaine Maubuée at No. 122 is referred to in old documents so early as 1320. Its name shortened from mauvaise buée, i.e. mauvaise fumée, is not suggestive of the purity of its waters at that remote period; the fountain was reconstructed in 1733—the house some sixty years later. The upper end of Rue Simon-le-Franc, which we turn into here, was until recent times Rue Maubuée. It may, perhaps, still deserve the name. Rue Simon-le-Franc is one of the oldest among all these old streets, for it was a thoroughfare in the year 1200. It records the name of a worthy citizen of his day, one Simon Franque. All the houses are ancient, some very picturesque. Next in date is that most characteristic of old-time streets, the Rue de Venise. The name, a misnomer, dates only from 1851, due to an old sign. The street was known by various appellations since its formation somewhere about the year 1250. Every house and court there is ancient, the space between those on either side so narrow that the tall, dark buildings seem to meet at their apex. No. 27 is the old inn “l’Épée de Bois,” lately renovated and its name changed to “L’Arrivée de Venise,” where from the year 1658 a company of musicians and dancing-masters duly licensed by Mazarin used to meet under the direction of “Le roi des violons,” their chief. This was, in fact, the nucleus of the Académie National of Music and Dancing, known later as the Conservatoire. Great men of letters too were wont to meet in that old inn. Rue de Venise opens into Rue Beaubourg, a road that stretched through a beau bourg, i.e. a fine township, so far back as the eleventh century, with special privileges, the rights of citizenship for its inhabitants although lying without the boundary-wall. No. 4, now razed, was the “Restaurant du Bon Bourg,” tenu par “le Roi du Bon Vin.” To the left is Rue des Étuves, i.e. Bath Street, with houses old and curious. Rue de Venise runs at its lower end into the famous Rue de Quincampoix, the street of Law’s bank (see p. 63), where every house is ancient or has vestiges of past ages. No. 43 was a shop let in Law’s time at the rate of 100 francs a day. The street leads down into Rue des Lombards, the ancient usurers’ and pawnbrokers’ street, inhabited in these days by a very opposite class—herborists. Tradition says Boccaccio was born here. Rue du Temple, Rue des Archives, Rue Vieille-du-Temple, Rue de Sévigné, traversed in part in the 3rd arrondissement (see p. 108) all have their lower numbers in this 4th arrondissement, the first three branching off from Rue de Rivoli, the last from Rue St-Antoine. At No. 61, Rue du Temple, on the site of the vanished Couvent des Filles de Ste-Avoie, we see an old gabled house. In the courtyard of No. 57, l’hôtel de Titon, the Bastille armourer. At No. 41 the old tavern “l’Aigle d’Or.” No. 20 is the ancient office of the Gabelles—the salt-tax. Here we see an old sign taken from the vicinity of St-Gervais, showing the famous elm-tree, of which more anon. Every house shows some interesting old-time feature. This brings us again close up to the Hôtel de Ville, where we see the venerable church St-Gervais-et-St-Protais, dating in its present form from the sixteenth century, on the site of a church built there in the sixth. That primitive erection grew into a beautiful church in the early years of the twelfth century. Some of the exquisite work of that day may still be seen by turning up the narrow passage to the left, where we find the ancient charniers. Rebuilding was undertaken two centuries later. A curious half-effaced inscription on an old wall within refers to this reconstruction and its dedication fête day, instituted in honour of “Messieurs St. Gervais et St. Protais.” The last rebuilding was in 1581. Then in the seventeenth century, the Renaissance façade was added to the Gothic edifice behind it by Salomon de Brosse. The church is full of precious artistic work, glorious glass, frescoes, statuary and rich in historic associations. Madame de Sévigné was married here; Scarron was married to the young girl destined to become Mme de Maintenon, and was perhaps buried in the beautiful Chapelle-Dorée. The church has always suffered in time of war. At the Revolution the insurgents tried to shake down its fine tall pillars; the marks are still to be seen. In 1830-48-71 cannon balls pierced its belfry walls, and now on Good Friday of this war-year 1918, the enemy’s gun, firing at a range of seventy-five miles, struck its roof, laid low a great pillar, brought death and wounding to the assembled congregation. On the place before the church we see a tree railed round. A shadier elm-tree stood there once, the famous Orme de St-Gervais, beneath which justice—or maybe at times injustice—was administered in the open air, in long-past ages.

Rue François-Miron running east, its lower end the ancient Rue St-Antoine, shows us the orme, figured in the ironwork of all its balconies. This end of the street was known in olden days as Rue du Pourtour St-Gervais, then as Rue du Monceau St-Gervais, referring to the wide stretch of waste ground in the vicinity which, unbuilt upon for centuries, was a favourite site for festive gatherings and tournaments. It records the name of the Prévôt des Marchands of the sixteenth century to whom was due the façade of the Hôtel de Ville, burnt in 1871. Its houses are for the most part ancient. No. 13, quaint and gabled, fifteenth century. No. 82 the old mansion of President Henault. No. 68 hôtel de Beauvais, associated with many historic personages and events, has Gothic cellars which of yore formed part of the monastastic house where Tasso wrote his great poem “Jerusalem Delivered.” The walls above those fine cellars were knocked down in the third decade of the seventeenth century and replaced in 1655 by those we see there now, built as the hôtel de Beauvais, destined to see many changes. At the Revolution the grand old mansion was for a time a coach-office, then a house let out in flats. Mozart is said to have stayed there in 1763.

Behind the church is the old Rue des Barres with an ancient inscription and traces of an ancient chapel. The sordid but picturesque Rue de l’Hôtel de Ville was known for centuries as Rue de la Mortellerie, from the morteliers, or masons who had settled there. In the dread cholera year 1832 the inhabitants saw in the name of their street a sinister reference to the word mort and demanded its change. Every house has some feature of old-time interest. Beneath No. 56 there is a Gothic cellar, once, tradition says, a chapel founded by Blanche de France, grand-daughter of Philippe-le-Bel, who died in 1358. At No. 39 we see the narrowest street in Paris, Rue du Paon Blanc, erewhile known as the “descente à la rivière.” Nos. 8-2 is the venerable hôtel de Sens (see p. 117).

In Rue Geoffroy l’Asnier, between Rue de l’Hôtel de Ville and Rue François-Miron, thirteenth century, we find among many other vestiges of old times the fine seventeenth-century door of hôtel Chalons at No. 26. In Rue de Jouy of the same period and interest, at No. 12 and No. 14, dependencies of l’hôtel Beauvais; at No. 7 l’hôtel d’Aumont, built in 1648 on the site of the house where Richelieu was born. At No. 9, the École Sophie-Germain, the ancient hôtel de Fourcy, previously inhabited by a rich bourgeois family.

Rue des Archives (see p. 74) is chiefly interesting in its course through this arrondissement for the old church des Billettes (see p. 76) on the site of the house of the Jew Jonathas, so called from the sign hung outside a neighbouring house—a billot—i.e. log of wood. Rebuilt in 1745, closed at the Revolution, the church was given to the Protestants in 1808. The beautiful cloisters of the fifteenth-century structure were left untouched and are enclosed in the school adjoining the church. Rue Ste-Croix-de-la-Bretonnerie dates from the early years of the thirteenth century and is rich in relics of past ages. Its name records the existence there of the thirteenth-century church de l’Exaltation de la Ste-Croix and of a convent instituted in 1258 in the ancient Monnaie du Roi—the Mint—suppressed at the Revolution, but of which traces are still seen on the square. At No. 47 we see a turret dating from 1610. The dispensary at No. 44 is the old hôtel Feydeau de Brou (1760). No. 35 belonged to the old church Chapter. The boys’ school at No. 22 is ancient. No. 20 dates from 1696. Rue Aubriot from the thirteenth to the middle of the nineteenth century was Rue du Puits-au-Marais. Aubriot was the thirteenth-century Prévôt de Paris, an active builder, and who first laid drains beneath Paris streets. No. 10 dates from the first years of the seventeenth century. Vestiges of that or an earlier age are seen all along the street. Rue des Blancs-Manteaux recalls the begging Friars, servants of Mary, wearing long white cloaks, who settled here in 1258. They united a few years later with the Guillemites, whose name is recorded in a neighbouring street of ancient date. Their church at No. 12 was entirely rebuilt in 1685, and in 1863 the portal of the demolished Barnabite church added to its façade. Remains of the old convent buildings are incorporated in the Mont-de-Piété opposite. At No. 14 we see traces of the old Priory. No. 22 and No. 25 have fine old staircases and other interesting vestiges. The cabaret de “l’Homme Armé” existed in the fifteenth century. We find ancient vestiges, often fine staircases, at most of the houses.

Rue Vieille-du-Temple, which begins its long course opposite the Mairie, has lost its first numbers. This old street shows us interesting features at every step. No. 15, hôtel de Vibraye. No. 20, Impasse de l’hôtel d’Argenson. No. 24, hôtel of the Maréchal d’Effiat, father of Cinq Mars. The short Rue du Trésor at its side was so named in 1882 from the treasure-trove found beneath the hôtel when cutting the street, gold pieces of the time of King Jean and Charles V in a copper vase, a sum of something like 120,000 francs in the money of to-day. At No. 42 opens Rue des Rosiers; roses once grew in gardens there. At No. 43 Passage des Singes, leading into Rue des Guillemites, once Rue des Singes. No. 45 shows a façade claiming to date back to the year 1416. No. 47, hôtel des Ambassadeurs de Hollande, recalling the days when Dutch diplomats dwelt there and took persecuted Protestants under their protection, is on the site of the hôtel of Jean de Rieux, before which the duc d’Orléans met his death at the hands of Jean Sans Peur, the habitation of historic persons and events until Revolution days, when it was taken for dancing saloons. Here we see splendid vestiges of past grandeur: vaulted ceilings, sculptures, frescoes. The Marché des Blancs-Manteaux, in the street opening at No. 46, is part of an ancient mansion. Turning down Rue des Hospitalières-St-Gervais, recalling the hospital once there, we find in Rue des Francs-Bourgeois, at No. 35, an old hôtel. At No. 31, l’hôtel d’Albret, its first stone laid in 1550 by Connétable Anne de Montmorency, restored in the eighteenth century. At No. 25, one side of the fine hôtel Lamoignon. Crossing Rue des Rosiers we turn down Rue des Écouffes, an ancient street of pawnbrokers, where in a house on the site of No. 20, Philippe de Champaigne, the great painter, lived and died (1674). Rue du Roi de Sicile records the existence there, and on land around, of the palace of Charles d’Anjou, brother of St. Louis, crowned King of Naples and Sicily in 1266. The mansion changed hands many times and in 1698 became the hôtel de la Grande Force, a noted prison. Part of it became later the Caserne des Pompiers in Rue Sévigné; the rest was demolished. On the site of the house No. 2 lived Bault and his wife, jailers of Marie-Antoinette. And here, at the corner of Rue Malher, Princesse de Lamballe and many of her compeers were slain in the “Massacres of September.”

Rue Ferdinand-Duval, till 1900 from about the year 1000 Rue des Juifs, is full of old-time relics. At No. 20 we find a courtyard and hôtel known in past days as l’hôtel des Juifs. Nos. 18 and 16, site of the hospital du Petit St-Antoine in pre-Revolution days, of a famous shop store under the Empire.

Rue Pavée dates from the early years of the thirteenth century, the first street in Paris to be paved. Here at Nos. 11 and 13 lived the duke of Norfolk, British Ambassador in 1533. At No. 12 we find two old staircases, once those of an ancient hôtel incorporated in the prison of La Force. At No. 24 stands the fine old hôtel de Lamoignon, rebuilt on the site of an older structure, by Diane de France, daughter of Henri II (sixteenth century), the natal house of Lamoignon de Malesherbes, renowned for his defence of Louis XVI. Alphonse Daudet lived here for a time. Close by was the prison la Petite Force, a woman’s prison, too well known in Revolution days by numerous notable women of the time. In Rue de Sévigné, which begins here, we turn at No. 11 into the garden of a bathing establishment on the site of a smaller hôtel Lamoignon, where in 1790 Beaumarchais built the théâtre du Marais, otherwise l’Athénée des Étrangers, with materials from the demolished Bastille. Here we see before us one single wall of the demolished prison de la Force, and an indication of the spot where thirty royalist prisoners were put to death. Rue de Jarente, so named from the Prior of the monastic institution, Ste-Catherine du Val des Escholiers, erewhile here, shows us an old fountain in the Impasse de la Poissonnerie. Rue d’Ormesson stretches across the eighteenth-century priory fish market.

CHAPTER XII

THE OLD QUARTIER ST-POL

WE come now to the interesting old-world quarter behind and surrounding the church St-Paul and the Lycée Charlemagne, the site of the palace St-Pol of ancient days. The church, as we see it, dates from 1641, replacing a tiny Jesuit chapel built in the previous century and dedicated to St. Louis. Its first stone was laid by Louis XIII, and the chapel built from the designs of two Jesuit priests, aided by the architect Vignole. Hence the term Jesuite used in France for the ornate Renaissance style of architecture we see in the façade of the church before us. Richelieu, newly ordained, celebrated his first Mass here in 1641, and defrayed the cost of completing the church by the erection of the great portal. The heart of Louis XIII and of Louis XIV were buried here beneath sumptuous monuments. At the Revolution the Tiers État, held their first assembly in the old church St-Pol, soon razed to the ground by the insurgents. The Jesuits’ chapel was saved from destruction by the books from suppressed convents which had been piled up within it, forming thus a barricade. The dome was the second erected in Paris. The holy water scoops were a gift from Victor Hugo at the baptism of his first child born in the parish.

Turning into Rue St-Paul we see at No. 35 the doorway of the demolished hôtel de Sève. In the Passage St-Paul, till 1877 Passage St-Louis, we find at No. 7 the presbytère, once, tradition says, a pied-à-terre of the grand Condé, and at No. 38 an old courtyard. At No. 36 vestiges of the prison originally part of the convent founded by St. Éloi in the time of Dagobert.[C] The arched Passage St-Pierre which led in olden days to the cemetery St-Pol, the burial-place of so many notable persons: Rabelais, Mansart, etc., and of prisoners from the Bastille, the man in the iron mask among them, has lately been swept away, with some walls of the old convent close up against it. The Manège till recent days at No. 30 was in days past a favourite meeting place of the people when in disaccord with the authorities in politics or on industrial questions. At No. 31 we look into Rue Éginhard, the Ruelle St-Pol of the fourteenth century; the walls of some of its houses once formed part of the old church St-Pol. At No. 8 we see the square turret of an old-hôtel St-Maur. At No. 4, l’hôtel de Vieuville, an interesting fifteenth-and sixteenth-century building, condemned to demolition, which has been inhabited by notable personages of successive periods. Passing through the black-walled court we mount a fine old-time staircase to find halls with beautiful mouldings, a wonderful frescoed ceiling, etc. etc., all in the possession at present of a well-known antiquarian. No. 5, doorway of l’hôtel de Lignerac. In Rue Ave-Maria, its site covered in past days by two old convents, we see at No. 15 an hôtel where was once the tennis-court of the Croix-Noire, in its day the “Illustre Théâtre” with Molière as its chief and whence the great tragedian was led for debt to durance vile at the Châtelet. No. 2 was once “la Boucherie Ave-Maria.”

Rue Charlemagne was known by various names till this last one given in 1844—one of its old names, Rue des Prêtres, is still seen engraved in the wall at No. 7. The petit Lycée Charlemagne has among its walls part of one of the ancient towers of the boundary wall of Philippe-Auguste which passed in a straight line to the Seine at this point. It is known as Tour Montgomery and shelters a ... gas meter! The remains of another tower are seen behind the gymnasium. Before 1908 the last remaining walls of the hôtel du Prévôt still stood in Passage Charlemagne, a picturesque turreted Renaissance bit of “Old Paris” let out in tenements, the last vestiges of the historic mansion where many notable persons, royal and other, had sojourned. Interesting old-time features are seen at Nos. 18, 21, 22, 25; No. 25 underwent restoration in recent years.

In Rue du Prévôt we see more old-time vestiges. Rue du Figuier dates from about 1300 when a fig-tree flourished there, cut down three centuries later. Nos. 19-15, now a Jewish hospice, was the abode of the Miron, royal physicians from 1550 to 1680. Every house shows some relic. At No. 5 we come upon an old well and steps in the courtyard. No. 8 was perhaps the home of Rabelais. At No. 1 we find ourselves before the turreted hôtel de Sens, built between 1474 and 1519, on the site of a private mansion given by Charles V to the archbishops of Sens, who at that time had ecclesiastical jurisdiction over Paris. Ecclesiastics of historic fame, and at one time Marguerite de Valois, la Reine Margot, dwelt there during the succeeding 150 years. Then Paris became an archbishopric, and this fine hôtel de Sens was abandoned—let. It has served as a coaching house, a jam manufactory, finally became a glass store and factory, and in part a Jewish synagogue. In Rue du Fauconnier, Nos. 19, 17, 15, are ancient. Rue des Jardins, where stretched the gardens of the old Palais St-Pol, has none but ancient houses. At No. 5 we see a hook which served of yore to hold the chain stretched across the street to close it. Molière lived there in 1645. Rabelais died there.

Crossing Rue St-Paul we come to Rue des Lions, recalling the royal menagerie once there. Fine old mansions lie along its whole length. At No. 10 we find a beautiful staircase; another at No. 12, dating from the reign of Louis XIII, and in the courtyard at No. 3 we see an ancient fountain. At No. 14 there was till recent times the fountain “du regard des lions.” No. 17 formed part of l’hôtel Vieuville. Chief among the ancient houses of Rue Charles V is No. 12, l’hôtel d’Antoine d’Aubray, father of the notorious woman-poisoner, la Brinvilliers, with its graceful winding staircase. Here Mme de Brinvilliers tried to bring about the assassination of her lover Briancourt by her other lover Ste-Croix. Nuns, nursing sisters, live there now. Rue Beautreillis was in bygone days the site of a vine-covered trellis in the gardens of the historic palace St-Pol made up of l’hôtel Beautreillis and other fine hôtels confiscated from his nobles by King Charles V, and at No. 1 we see an ancient and truly historic vine climbing a trellis, its origin lost in the mist of centuries. Is it really, as some would have it, a relic of the vines that gave grapes for the table of Charles V? All the houses here are ancient. No. 10 was the mansion of the duc de Valentinois, prince de Monaco in 1640. We see ancient houses along Rue du Petit Musc, a fourteenth-century street. No. 1 is the south side of l’École Massillon (see p. 326). We cross boulevard Henri IV to the Bibliothèque de l’Arsenal, its walls in part, the Arsenal built by Henri IV on the site of a more ancient one, restored in the first half of the eighteenth century, its façade entirely rebuilt under Napoléon III. The name of Sully given to the bridge and the street reminds us that the statesman lived at the Arsenal. There Mme de Brinvilliers was tried and condemned to death. The Arsenal was done away with by Louis XVI, streets cut across the site of most of its demolished walls. What remained became the library we see; it has counted among its librarians men of special distinction: Nodier, Hérédia, etc., and is now under the direction of the well-known man of letters Funck-Brentano. Various relics of past days and of old-time inhabitants are to be seen there and traces of the boundary wall of Charles V. Rue de la Cerisaie, hard by, is another street recalling the palace gardens—for cherry-trees then grew here. On the site of No. 10 Gabrielle d’Estrées was seized with her last illness while at the supper-table of its owner, the friend of her loyal lover. The houses here are all ancient and characteristic, as are also those in Rue Lesdiguières where till the first years of this present century the wall of a dependency of the Bastille still stood.

CHAPTER XIII

LA PLACE DES VOSGES

HERE we are on the old Place Royale—the place where royalties dwelt and courtiers disported in the days of Louis XIII, whose statue we see still in the centre of the big, dreary garden square. That statue was put there by Napoléon to replace the original one, carted away and melted down in Revolutionary days when the ci-devant Place Royale became Place des Fédérés, then Place de l’Indivisibilité. Napoléon first named it Place des Vosges, a name confirmed after 1870 as a tribute of gratitude to the department which had first paid up its share of the war contribution. In the early centuries of the Bourbon kings the palace of the Tournelles had stood here (see p. 8). After its demolition the site was taken for a horse market, and there the famous duel was fought between the mignons of Henri II and the followers of the duc de Guise. Henri IV created the Place and had it parcelled out for building purposes. His idea was to make it the centre of a number of streets or avenues each bearing the name of one of the provinces of France. The King died and that project was not carried out, but the extensive site was soon the square of the fine mansions we see to-day, mansions fallen from their high estate, no longer the private abodes of the world of fashion, but standing unchanged in outward aspect.

We see the Pavillon du Roi on the south side facing Rue de Birague, once Rue du Pavillon du Roi, where at No. 11 was born Mme de Sévigné (1626); opposite it the Pavillon de la Reine. At No. 7 the petit hôtel Sully connected with the grand hôtel Sully of the Rue St-Antoine. Each house of the place was inhabited and known by the name of a great noble or a wealthy financier. Their enumeration would take too much space here. At No. 6 we see the house where Victor Hugo lived in more modern times—1833-48—now the Musée filled with souvenirs of his life and work and dedicated to his memory. Behind it, at the corner of Impasse Guénémée, is the hôtel once the dwelling of Marion Delorme. Théophile Gautier, and later Alphonse Daudet occupied a flat at No. 8. Passing out of the place through Rue du Pas de la Mule, in its day “petite Rue Royale,” we turn into Rue St-Antoine, where modern buildings are almost unknown, and vestiges of bygone ages are seen on every side. At No. 5 an inscription tells us this was the site of the courtyard of the Bastille through which the populace rushed in attack on the 14th July, 1789. At No. 7 we remark an ancient sign “A la Renommée de la Friture.” At No. 17 we see what remains of the convent built by Mansart in 1632, on the site of the hôtel de Cossé, where for eighteen years St. Vincent de Paul was confessor. The chapel, left intact, was given to the Protestants in 1802. Here Fouquet and his son, Mme de Chantal, and the Marquis de Sévigné were buried. No. 20 is l’hôtel de Mayenne et d’Ormesson, sixteenth or seventeenth century, on the site of an older hôtel sold to Charles V to enlarge his palace St-Pol. It passed through many hands, royal hands for the most part, and the building as we see it, or the previous structure, was for a time the hôtel de Diane de Poitiers. In modern times it became the Pension Favart, then in 1870, l’École des Francs-Bourgeois under the direction of les Frères de la doctrine chrétienne. At No. 28 Impasse Guénémée, known in its fifteenth-century days as Cul-de-Sac du Ha! Ha! a passage connected with the hôtel Rohan-Guénémée in Place Royale. In the seventeenth century a convent was built here, a sort of reformatory for erring girls and women of the upper classes who were shut up here in consequence of lettres de cachet. At No. 62 stands the hôtel de Sully. Its first owner staked the mansion at the gambling table and lost. At No. 101 we are before the Lycée Charlemagne, built in 1804 on the site of two ancient mansions and of the old city wall, of which some traces still remain. At No. 133 we see the Maison Séguier, with its fine old door, balcony and staircase; another old house at No. 137; then this ancient thoroughfare becomes in these modern days, Rue François-Miron (see p. 104).

Rue des Tournelles in this earlier part of its course is chiefly interesting for the fine hôtel at No. 28, built in 1690, decorated with frescoes by Lebrun and Mignard, where the famous courtesan, Ninon de Lenclos, lived and died.

CHAPTER XIV

THE BASTILLE

The famous prison which stood there from the end of the fourteenth century to the memorable summer of 1789, was built by Hugues Aubriot, Prévôt du Roi, as a fortified castle to protect the palais St-Pol close by, and Paris in general, against hostile inroads from the country beyond. Its form is well known. A perfect model of it is to be seen at Carnavalet, in that most interesting salle—the Bastille-room. It had eight towers each 23 mètres high, each with its distinct name and use. White lines in the pavement of the place show where some of its walls, some of its towers rose, houses stand upon the site of others. The great military citadel became a regular prison in the time of Charles VI—a military prison, though civilians were from the first shut up there from time to time. Aubriot himself was put there by the mob, to be quickly released by the King. Under Richelieu it became a State prison, the prison of lettres de cachet notoriety. The Revolutionists attacked it in the idea that untold harshness, cruelty, injustice dominated there. As a matter of fact, the Bastille was for years rather a luxurious place of retirement for persons who themselves wished or were desired by others to lie low for a time, than a fort of durance vile. The last governor, M. de Launay, in particular, was generous and kind even to the humblest of those placed beneath his rule. And we know the attacking mob found seven prisoners only—two madmen, the others acknowledged criminals. M. de Launay was massacred nevertheless. The Revolutionists seized all the arms they could find, a goodly store; the walls were razed soon afterwards and a board put up with the words “Ici on dance.” In reality the attack upon the Bastille was a milder under-taking than is generally supposed, and its entire destruction took place later on in quite a business-like way by a contractor.

The place was finished in 1803. The Colonne de Juillet we see there dates from 1831. The bones of the victims of the two minor Revolutions (1830-48) are beneath it. Louis Philippe’s throne was burnt before it in 1848.

CHAPTER XV

IN THE VICINITY OF TWO ANCIENT CHURCHES

ARRONDISSEMENT V. PANTHÉON. RIVE GAUCHE (LEFT BANK)

CROSSING the Seine by the Pont St-Michel we reach Place St-Michel, of which we will speak in another chapter, as it lies chiefly in arrondissement VI. Turning to the east, we come upon two of the oldest and most interesting of Paris churches and a very network of ancient streets, sordid enough some of them, but emphatically characteristic. Rue de la Huchette dates from the twelfth century; there in olden days two very opposite classes plied their trade:—the rotisseurs—turnspits, and the diamond cutters. The old street is still of some renown in the district for good cooking in the few restaurants of a humble order that remain. The erewhile Bouillon de la Huchette is now a bal. Once upon a time Ambassadors dined at l’hôtellerie de l’Ange in this old street. And the name “Le Petit Caporal” tells its own tale. There Buonaparte, friendless and penniless, lodged in the street’s decadent days. Rue Zacharie, dark and narrow between its tall old houses, dates back to the twelfth or early thirteenth century. Rue du Chat qui Pêche, less ancient (sixteenth century), is a mere pathway between high walls. From Rue Zacharie we turn into Rue St-Séverin, one of the most ancient of ancient streets. Many traces of past ages still remain despite the demolition of old houses around the beautiful old church we see before us, and subterranean passages run beneath the soil. At No. 26 and again at No. 4 we see the name of the street, the word Saint obliterated by the Revolutionists. The church porch gives on Rue de Prêtres-St-Séverin—thirteenth century. It was brought here from the thirteenth-century church St-Pierre-aux-Bœufs, razed in 1837. Till then the entrance had been the old door, Rue St-Séverin, where we see still the words, half effaced: “Bonne gens, qui par cy passées, priez Dieu pour les trepassés,” and the figures of two lions, once on the church steps, where the Clergy of the parish were wont of yore to administer justice: hence the phrase “Datum inter leones.” The church was built in the twelfth century, on the site of a chapel erected in the days of Childebert, over the tomb of Séverin, the hermit. Thrice restored, partially rebuilt, the beautiful edifice shows Gothic architecture in its three stages: primitive: porch, side door, three bays; rayonnant: the tower and part of the nave and side aisle; flamboyant: chancel and the splendid apse. Glorious stained glass, beautiful frescoes—modern, the work of Flandrin, fine statues surround us here. A striking feature is the host of votive offerings, some a mere slab a few inches in size with the simple word “Merci” and a date. Many refer to the successful passing of examinations, for we are in the vicinity of the University. The presbytery and its garden cover what was once the graveyard. Some of the old charniers still remain.

Rue de la Parcheminerie (thirteenth century), in part demolished recently, in its early days Rue des Escrivains, was for long the exclusive habitation of whoever had to do with the making and selling of books. The “hôtel des Pères Tranquilles” once there has gone. Two old houses, Nos. 6 and 7, were in the thirteenth-century dependencies of Norwich Cathedral for English student-monks. In Rue Boutebrie, one side entirely rebuilt of late, dwelt the illuminators of sixteenth-century scrolls and books. We see a characteristic ancient gable at No. 6. This house and No. 8 have ancient staircases. Crossing Rue St-Jacques we turn into Rue St-Julien-le-Pauvre, “le Vieux Chemin” of past times. Through the old arched doorway we see there, surmounted by a figure of Justice, was the abode of a notable eighteenth-century Governor of the Petit-Châtelet, whose duty was that of hearing both sides in student quarrels and pronouncing judgment. The church we see was the University church of the twelfth and several succeeding centuries. University meetings were held there and many a town and gown riot, or a merely gown riot, took place within its walls. The slab above the old door tells of its cession to the administrators of the hôtel-Dieu in 1655. Some of its stones date from the ninth or, maybe, from an even earlier century; for the church before us was a rebuilding in the twelfth of one erected in the ninth century to replace the hostel and chapel built there in the sixth century and overthrown by the Normans—the hostel where Gregory of Tours had made a stay. The ancient Gothic portal and two bays falling to decay were lopped off in 1560. The well we see in the courtyard was once within the church walls. Another well of miracle-working fame, on the north side, had a conduit to the altar. Passing through a door near the vestry we find ourselves on the site of the ancient annexe of the hôtel-Dieu, razed a few years ago, and see on one side the chevet of the church with its quaint belfry and flight of steps on the roof, on the other a high, strong, moss-grown wall said to be a remnant of the boundary wall of Philippe-Auguste. In 1802 the church was given to the Greek Catholics of Paris—Melchites. The iconostase, therefore, very beautiful, is an important feature. We see some very ancient statues, and a more modern one of Montyon, founder of the Virtue-prizes bestowed annually by the Académie Française.

In Rue Galande, what remains of it, we see several interesting old houses, and on the door of No. 42 a bas-relief showing St. Julien in a ship. Rue du Fouarre, one side gone save for a single house, once Rue des Escholiers, recalls the decree of Pope Urban V that students of the Schools must hear lectures humbly sitting on the ground on bundles of straw which they were bound themselves to provide. Benches were too luxurious for the students of those days. In this street of the “Écoles des Quatre Nations,” France, Normandie, Alsace, Picardie, Dante listened to the instruction of Brunetto Latini. No. 8 with its old door is on the site of the “École de Normandie.” The street close by, named in memory of the great Italian poet, is modern. In Rue Domat stood, till the nineteenth century, the walls of the suppressed convent de Cornouailles founded by a Breton in 1317. Rue des Anglais, the resort of English students from the time of Philippe-Auguste, was famous till recent days for the Cabaret du Père Lunette, about to be razed. The first Père Lunette went about his business wearing enormous spectacles. The second landlord of the inn, gaining possession of its founder’s “specs,” wore them as a badge, slung across his chest. Rue de l’hôtel Colbert has no reference to the statesman. In early times it was Rue des Rats. Rue des Trois-Portes recalls the thirteenth-century days when three houses only formed the street. No. 10, connected with No. 13 Rue de la Bûcherie, the log-selling street, shows us the ancient “Faculté de Médicine,” surrounded in past days by the garden, the first of the kind, where medical men and medical students cultivated the herbs necessary for their physic. The interesting old Gothic structure, more than once threatened with demolition, has been classed as an historical monument, under State care therefore, and reconstructed as the Maison des Étudiants. The students were very keen about the completion of their new house on its time-honoured site, and when the masons in course of reconstruction went on strike, the young men threw aside their books, donned a workman’s jacket, or failing that doffed their coats and rolled up their shirt-sleeves and set to work with all youth’s ardour as bricklayers. Their zeal was greater, however, than their technical knowledge or their physical fitness, and their work left much to be desired, as the French say. Then fortunately the strike ended.

Place Maubert, named after the second vicar of Ste-Geneviève, M. Aubert, was the great meeting-place of students, and here Maître Albert, the distinguished Dominican professor, surnamed “le Grand,” his name recorded by a neighbouring street, gave his lectures in the open air. Executions also took place here. In Impasse Maubert dwelt Ste-Croix, the lover and accomplice of the poisoner Mme de Brinvilliers, and in Rue des Grand Degrés Voltaire in his youth worked in a lawyer’s office. The cellars of Rue Maître-Albert are said to have been prison cells; at No. 13 the negro page Zamor, whose denunciation led Mme Dubarry to the scaffold, died in misery in 1820. No. 16 was the meeting-place of the Communards in 1871.

Rue de la Bièvre reminds us that the tributary of the Seine, now a turgid drain, closely covered, once joined the mother-river here. Tradition says Dante made his abode here while in Paris. Over the door of No. 12 we see a statue of St-Michel slaying the dragon. This was originally a college founded in his own house in 1348 by Guillaume de Chanac, bishop of Paris, for twelve poor scholars of the diocese of Limoges.

In Rue des Bernardins we see the church St-Nicolas-du-Chardonnet, St-Nicolas of the Thistle-field, built in the seventeenth century upon the site of a thirteenth-century structure erected where till then thistles had run riot. It was designed by a parishioner of mark, the painter Lebrun, enriched by his paintings and those of other artists of note. The tomb of his mother is within its walls and a monument to his memory by Coysevox. Rue St-Victor recalls the abbey, once on the site where now we see the Halle-aux-Vins. There Maurice de Sulli, builder of Notre-Dame, died and was buried in 1196. Hither, to its famous school, came Abelard, St. Thomas à Becket, St. Bernard. It was razed to the ground in 1809. At Nos. 24-26 we saw till just recently the ancient seminary of St-Nicolas, closed since 1906, with its long rows of old-world windows, seventy-two panes on one story; the college buildings were at the corner of Rue Pontoise, a street opened in 1772 as a calf-market and named from the town noted for its excellent veal. And here we find at No. 19 vestiges of the ancient convent of the Bernardins. Rue de Poissy has more important remains of the convent and of its college, founded in 1245 by the English Abbé de Clairvaux, Stephen Lexington, aided by a brother of St. Louis. The grand old walls now serve as the Caserne des Pompiers—the Fire Station. Within we find beautiful old-time Gothic work, a fine staircase, arched naves, tall, slender pillars—the refectory of the monks of yore; and beneath it vaulted cellars with some seventy pillars and ancient bays.

CHAPTER XVI

IN THE REGION OF THE SCHOOLS

THE SORBONNE AND ITS SURROUNDINGS

WHEN St. Louis was on the throne of France the physician attendant upon his mother, la Reine Blanche, died bequeathing a sum of money for the institution of a college of theology. In consequence thereof Robert de Sorbon built the school for theological study, a very simple erection then, which developed into the great college adapted to studies of the most varied character, known as the Sorbonne: that was in the year 1253. Two hundred years later the first printing press in France was set up there. In another nigh upon two hundred years Richelieu, elected Grand Master of the college, built its church and rebuilt the surrounding structure. Napoléon set the college in action on a vaster scale, after its suppression at the Revolution, by making it the seat of the Académie de Paris, the “home” of the Faculties of Letters and Science, as well as of Theology. But the edifice was then again crumbling—in need of rebuilding. Time passed, ruin made headway. Plans were made, and in 1853 the first stone of a new structure was laid. It remained a first stone and a last one for many years. The modern walls we see were not built till the close of the nineteenth century, finished in 1901. In the great courtyard white lines mark the site of Richelieu’s edifice. The vast building is richly decorated with statuary and frescoes. In its church Richelieu seems still to hold sway. We see his coat-of-arms on every side; over his tomb, the work of Girardon, hangs his Cardinal’s hat. Another handsome monument covers the tomb of his descendant, the minister of Louis XVIII. Many generations of Richelieu lie in the vault beneath the chapel floor. The church is dismantled and partially secularized. Grand classic concerts are held there during the Sundays of term each year, but the Richelieu have still the right to be baptized, married, buried there; the altar therefore has not been undraped.

Exactly opposite the Sorbonne, on its Rue des Écoles side, is the beautiful Musée de Cluny, on the site of the ancient Palais des Thermes of which the ruins are seen in the grounds bordered by the boulevard St-Germain. The palace dates from Roman days. Julian was proclaimed Emperor there. We see an altar from the time of Tiberius. The remains of Roman baths—vestiges of the frigidarium, the tepidarium, the hypocaustum, traces of the pipes through which the water flowed are still there. In the fourteenth century Pierre de Chaslun, Abbot of Cluny, bought the ruins of the ancient palace, and the exquisite Gothic mansion we see was built close up against them. Many illustrious persons found shelter within the home of the Abbots during the centuries that followed. James V of Scotland stayed there. Men of learning were made welcome there. In later times its tower was used as an observatory. The Revolution put an end to the state and prestige of the beautiful mansion. It was sold, parcelled out to a number of buyers, put to all sorts of common and commercial uses, till, in 1833, M. de Sommerard, whose name is given to the street on its northern side, acquired it and set up there his own precious collection of things beautiful, the nucleus of the Museum. The whole property was taken over later by the Beaux-Arts under State protection for conservation. In the garden numerous interesting relics of ancient churches, that of St-Benoît which once stood near, and others, are carefully preserved.

Rue Jean-de-Beauvais was in bygone days inhabited entirely by printers. The Roumanian chapel there was the chapel of the famous College Dormans-Beauvais, founded in 1370. Rue de Latran—modern—runs across the site of the ancient commanderie of the Knights of St. John of Jerusalem.

In Rue des Carmes, dating from 1250, we see at No. 15 the ancient College des Lombards, now the Cercle Catholique d’Ouvriers, founded 1334, rebuilt under Louis XIV by two Irish priests. The little chapel there, dedicated now to “Jesus Ouvrier,” is paved with the gravestones of the Irish clergy who came of yore to live and study there.

Rue Basse des Carmes stretches across the site of the demolished Carmelite Convent. We are close now to the Collège de France, le Lycée Louis-le-Grand and l’École Polytechnique.

Le Collège de France, Rue des Écoles, its beautiful west façade giving on Rue St-Jacques, was founded as an institution by François I (1530); its lectures were to be given in different colleges. The edifice before us replaces this “Collège Royal,” built in the early years of the seventeenth century, destroyed in the eighteenth century. It dates from 1778, the work of Chalgrin. Additions were made in the nineteenth century. The numerous finely executed busts of noted scholars and eminent professors are the work of the best sculptors of each period.

The Lycée Louis-le-Grand, Rue St-Jacques, on the site of four colleges of bygone ages, dates in its foundation from 1550, rebuilt 1814-20, restored 1861-85. In the court we see some of the ancient walls. It has borne different names characteristic of the different periods of the history of France. It began as the Collège de Clermont, from its founder, the bishop; in 1682 it took the name of the King, Louis-le-Grand. In 1792 it became Collège de l’Égalité; in 1800, Le Pyrtanée; Lycée Imperial in 1802; Collège Royal-Louis-le-Grand in 1814; Lycée Descartes in 1848, to revert to its present designation in 1849. Many of the most eminent men of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries were pupils there.

The Collège Ste-Barbe built in the sixteenth century was added to Louis-le-Grand in 1764. Its tower goes by the name Tour Calvin, for this was the Huguenot quarter. Here many of the persecuted Protestants were in hiding at the Massacre of St. Bartholomew. Yet it was at Ste-Barbe that Ignatius Loyola was educated.

Close around Lycée Louis-le-Grand and the Collège de France, we find a number of twelfth-and thirteenth-century streets condemned to demolition, some of their houses already razed, those that remain showing many interesting relics. Rue du Cimetière-St-Benoît, which bordered the cemetery erewhile there; Rue Fromantel, the name a corruption of froid mantel, or manteau, with its interesting old-world dwellings; Impasse Chartrière, where at No. 2 we see an old sign and a niche of the time of Henri IV, who was wont to visit his “belle Gabrielle” here. No. 11 was, it is said, the entrance to the King’s stables. At the junction of Rue Lanneau four streets form the quadrangle where was erewhile the well “Certain,” so named after the vicar of the old church St-Hilaire, once close by, discovered beneath the roadway in 1894. Roman remains of great interest were found at that time below the surface of all these streets. Rue Valette, eleventh century, was once Rue des Sept Voies, for seven thoroughfares met there. At No. 2, in the billiard-room of the old inn, we find vestiges of the church St-Hilaire, once there. No. 19 dates from the fourteenth century, and in the seventeenth century was a meeting-place of the Huguenots who hid in its Gothic two-storied cellars. In Rue Laplace lived Jean de Meung, author of Le Roman de la Rose. At No. 12 we see the entrance of a vanished college, next door to which was the Collège des Écossais.

L’École Polytechnique stands on the site of the college founded in 1304 by Jeanne de Navarre, wife of Philippe le Bel, for seventy poor scholars. It was rebuilt in the fifteenth century. The last vestiges of that rebuilding, a beautiful Gothic chapel, were swept away in 1875. Traces of a Roman cemetery were found in 1906. The present structure dates from the eighteenth century, the work of Gabriel. The house of the Général-Commandant is the ancient Collège de Boncourt, founded in 1357.

In Rue Clovis, at the summit of the Montagne Ste-Geneviève stands the Lycée Henri IV, dating as a school from 1796, known for several subsequent years as Lycée-Napoléon. It recalls vividly the abbey which once stood there. Its tower, known as the “Tour de Clovis,” rises from the foundations of the eleventh-century abbey tower and was for long used as the Paris Observatory. The college kitchen is one of the ancient abbey cellars—cellars in three stories. Some of the walls before us date from the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries. The library founded by Cardinal de la Rochefoucauld is the boys’ dormitory. A cloister and seventeenth-century refectory are there intact. The pupils go up and down a fine eighteenth-century staircase, and study amid interesting frescoes and much beautiful woodwork. New buildings were added to the ancient ones in 1873.

CHAPTER XVII

LA MONTAGNE STE-GENEVIÈVE

RUE DE LA MONTAGNE STE-GENEVIÈVE, leading to the hill-top from Boulevard St-Germain, went in twelfth-century days by the unæsthetic name Rue des Boucheries. Nearly every wall, every stone is ancient. In past ages three colleges at different positions stood on its incline. The sign at No. 40 dates from the time of the Directoire. A statuette of the saint there in Revolution days was labelled, “A la ci-devant Geneviève; Rendez-vous des Sans-Culottes.” And now we have before us the beautiful old church St-Etienne-du-Mont. The place, in very early times a graveyard, was laid out as a square in the fourteenth century and the church burial ground was on the north-western side. The present church dates as a whole from the early years of the seventeenth century, built on the site of a thirteenth-century chapel dedicated to St-Etienne. The abside and the choir were built in early sixteenth-century years, close up against the old basilic of the abbey Ste-Geneviève. Among the people the church is still often referred to as l’Église Ste-Geneviève, chiefly, no doubt, because the tomb of the patron saint of Paris is there. The original châsse—a richly jewel-studded shrine—was destroyed at the Revolution, melted down, its gems confiscated, the bones of the Saint burnt. The stone coffin cast aside as valueless was recovered, filled with such relics of Ste-Geneviève as could be collected from far and near, and is now in the sumptuous shrine to which pilgrimages are continually made. A smaller châsse is solemnly carried round the aisles of the church each year during the “neuvaine” following January 3rd, the revered Saint’s fête day, when services are held all day long, while on the place without a religious fair goes on ... souvenirs of Ste-Geneviève and objects of piety of every description are offered for sale on the stalls set up upon the place from end to end. The church, showing three distinct styles of architecture, Romanesque, Gothic, Renaissance, is especially remarkable for its rood-screen—the only one left in a Paris church. It is rich, too, in exquisite stained glass, beautiful woodwork, fine statuary. We see inscriptions and epitaphs referring to Pascal, Rollin and many other men of note, buried in the church crypt or in the graveyard of past days.

The Panthéon, the most conspicuous if not the most ancient or most seductive building of this hill-top, was begun as a new church Ste-Geneviève. Louis XV, lying dangerously ill at Metz, made a vow to build on his recovery a church dedicated to the patron saint of Paris. It was not begun till 1755, not solidly constructed then; slips followed the erection of its walls, threatening collapse, and Soufflot, the architect, died of grief thereat. The catastrophe feared did not happen; the building was consolidated. Instead, however, of remaining a church it was declared, in the Revolutionary year 1791, the Panthéon, with the inscription, “Aux Grands Hommes de France, la Patrie reconnaissante.” Napoléon restored it to the ecclesiastical authorities at the Concordat. In 1830 it became again the Panthéon; was once more a church in 1851—then the Panthéon for good—so far—in 1885, when the body of Victor Hugo was carried there in great state. Its façade is copied from the Panthéon of Agrippa at Rome. It is noted for its frescoes illustrative of the life of Ste-Geneviève, by Gros, Chavannes, Laurens and other nineteenth-century artists. Rodin’s “Penseur” below the peristyle was put there in 1906.

The Faculté de Droit, No. 10, is Soufflot’s work (1772-1823). The Bibliothèque Ste-Geneviève, quite modern (1884), covers the site of the demolished Collège Montaigu, founded in 1314. Ignatius Loyola, Erasmus and Calvin were pupils there. All the surrounding streets stretch along the site of ancient buildings, convents, monasteries, etc., swept away but leaving here and there interesting traces. In Rue Lhomond débris of the potteries once there have been unearthed. Michelet lived for a time at the ancient hôtel de Flavacourt. No. 10, incorporated later in the École Ste-Geneviève, of which the chief entrance door is a vestige of the hôtel de Juigné, was the private abode of the Archbishop of Paris in pre-Revolution days. Another part of the school was the home of Abbé Edgeworth, confessor to Louis XVI in his last days. Yet another was the Séminaire des Anglais, founded under Louis XIV. We find a fine façade and balconies in the courtyard at No. 29, once the abode of a religious community, now the lay “Institution Lhomond.”

The Séminaire des Missions des Colonies Françaises at No. 30 dates from the time of Louis XIV. Fine staircase and chapel. The cellars of the modern houses from No. 48 to No. 54 are those of the convent which erewhile stood above them.

In Rue des Irlandais we see the college founded in 1755 for Irish, Scottish and English priest-students. In Rue Rataud, once Rue des Vignes, which led to a cemetery for persons who had died of the plague, is, at No. 3, the orphanage of l’Enfant Jésus, formerly “Les Cent Filles,” where the duchesse d’Angoulême, daughter of Louis XVI, had fifty young orphan girls educated yearly at her own expense.

CHAPTER XVIII

IN THE VALLEY OF THE BIÈVRE

EMPHATICALLY a street of the past is the old Rue Mouffetard, its name a corruption perhaps of Mont Cérarius, the name of the district under the Romans, or derived maybe from the old word mouffettes, referring to the exhalations of the Bièvre, flowing now below ground here, never very odorous since the days when, coming sweet and clear from the southern slopes, it was put to city uses, industrial and other, on entering Paris. Every house along the course of this street has some curious old-time feature, an ancient sign, an old well, old doors, old courtyards. Quaint old streets lead out of it. The market on the place by the old church St-Médard extends up its slope.

In the sordid shops which flourish on the ground-floor of almost every house, or on stalls set on the threshold, one sees an assortment of foodstuffs rarely brought together in any other corner of the city, and articles of clothing of most varied kind and style and date.

The church dating from the twelfth century, partially rebuilt and restored in later times, was for several centuries a dependency of the abbey Ste-Geneviève. Its graveyard, for long past a market-place and a square, was in the eighteenth century the scene of the notorious scandale Médard. Among the graves of noted Jansenists buried there miraculous cures were supposed to take place. Women and girls fell into ecstasies. The number of these convulsionists grew daily. At last the King, Louis XV, ordered the cemetery to be closed. A witty inhabitant of the district managed to get near one of the tombstones the morning after the King’s command was made known and wrote thereon:

It is the parish of the Gobelins and a beautiful piece of Gobelins tapestry hangs over the vestry door. Fragments of ancient glass, a picture by Watteau, others by Philippe de Champaigne, beautiful woodwork and the quaintness of its architecture make the old church intensely interesting.

At No. 81 of this old-time street we find vestiges of a seventeenth-century chapel. At No. 52 ancient gravestones. The fountain at No. 60 dates from 1671. The house No. 9 is on the site of the Porte Marcel of bygone days.

Rue Broca, in the vicinity of St-Médard, dating from the twelfth century, when it was Rue de Lourcine, has many curious old houses. The houses of Rue du Pôt-de-fer are all ancient, as are most of those in Rue St-Médard. At No. 1 of Place de la Contre Scarpe close by, a modern place, an inscription marks the site of the Cabaret de la “Pomme de Pin,” celebrated by the eulogies of Ronsard and Rabelais.

CHAPTER XIX

RUE ST-JACQUES

PASSING amid the ancient colleges and churches, streets and houses we have been visiting, runs the old Rue St-Jacques. It begins at the banks of the Seine, stretches through the whole arrondissement, to become on leaving it a faubourg.

The line it follows was in a long-past age the Roman road from Lutetia to Orléans—the Via Superior—la grande rue—of early Paris history. Along its course in Roman times the Aqueduc d’Arcueil brought water from Rungis to the Palace of the Thermes (see p. 138). It is from end to end a long line of old-time buildings or vestiges of those swept away. The famous couvent des Jacobins extended across the site of the Bibliothèque de l’École de Droit and adjacent structures. At No. 172 stood the Porte St-Jacques in Philippe-Auguste’s great wall.

We see a fine old door at No. 5, a house with two-storied cellars. At a house on the site of No. 218 Jean de Meung wrote the Roman de la Rose. The famous poem was published lower down in the same street.

The church St-Jacques-du-Haut-Pas stands on the high ground we reach at No. 252, a seventeenth-century structure on the site of a chapel built in the fourteenth century by the monks from Italy known as the Pontifici, makers of bridges constructed to give pilgrims the means of crossing a mau pas or mauvais pas, i.e. a dangerous or difficult passage in rivers or roads. The beautiful woodwork within the church—that of the organ and pulpit—was brought here from the ancient, demolished church St-Benoît (see p. 140). We notice several good pictures. The fine stained glass once here was all smashed at the Revolution. The hôpital Cochin memorizes in the name of its founder an eighteenth-century vicar there. The churchyard was where Rue de l’Abbé-de-l’Épée now runs, known at one time as Ruelle du Cimetière-St-Jacques.

No. 254 bis, the national Deaf and Dumb Institution, is the ancient commanderie of the Frères hospitaliers de St-Jacques-du-Haut-Pas—the Pontifici—given for the purpose in 1790, partly rebuilt in 1823. The statue of Abbé de l’Épée, inventor of the alphabet for the deaf and dumb, in the court is the work of a deaf and dumb sculptor. The trunk of the tree we see near it is said to be that of an elm planted there by Sully three hundred years ago. At No. 262 we see vestiges of a vacherie, once the farm St-Jacques. At No. 261 we may turn into Rue des Feuillantines, where at No. 10 we see vestiges of the convent that was at one time in part the abode of George Sand, then of Mme Hugo, mother of the poet, and her children; later Jules Sardou lived in the impasse, now merged in the rue. At No. 269 we find some walls of the monastery founded by English Benedictines in 1640, to which a few years later they added a chapel dedicated to St. Edmond. The fabric is still the property of English bishops. It is used as a great music school: “Maison de la Schola Cantorum.” The door seen between two fine old pillars at No. 284 led in olden days to the Carmelite convent where Louise de la Vallière took definite refuge and acted as “sacristan” till her death; Rue du Val-de-Grâce runs where the convent stood.[D]

The military hospital Val-de-Grâce was founded as a convent early in the seventeenth century. Anne d’Autriche installed there the impoverished Benedictines of Val Parfond, or Profond, evacuated from their quarters hard by owing to an inundation from the Bièvre. In their gratitude they changed their name: the nuns of Val Profond became sisters of Val-de-Grâce. In 1645 Louis XIV, the child Anne d’Autriche had so ardently prayed for laid the first stone of the chapel dome, built on the model of St. Peter’s at Rome. The church is now used only for funerals and indispensable military services. The dependency of Val-de-Grâce was built by Catherine de’ Medici, the catacombs lie below it and the surrounding houses.

CHAPTER XX

LE JARDIN DES PLANTES

IT was in the early years of the seventeenth century that the King’s physician bought a piece of waste ground—a butte formed of the refuse of centuries accumulated there—for the culture of the multitudinous herbs and plants which made up the pharmacopia of the age. Thus was born the “Jardin Royal de herbes médicinales” laid out in 1626. Chairs of botany, pharmacy, surgery were instituted and endowed, and in 1650 the garden was thrown open to the public. A century later Buffon was named superintendent of the royal garden. He set himself to reorganize and enlarge. The amphitheatre, the natural history galleries, the chemistry laboratories, the fine lime-tree avenue are all due to him. Distinguished naturalists succeeded one another as directors of the garden, and after the death of Louis XVI a museum of natural history and a menagerie were set up with what was left of the King’s collection at Versailles. Additions and improvements were made in succeeding years till, after the outbreak of war in 1870, the Jardin was bombarded by the Prussians, and during the siege its live-stock largely drawn upon to feed the population of Paris. The garden and its buildings have been added to frequently. The labyrinth is on the site of the hillock bought by Guy de la Brosse, who first laid it out. A granite statue marks the spot where he and two notable travellers were buried. Surrounding streets record the names of great naturalists of different epochs.

In Rue Geoffroy St-Hilaire, once Rue Jardin du Roi, No. 5, now the Police Station, was built in 1760. At No. 30 a wheel once worked turned by the water of the Bièvre, now a malodorous drain-stream hidden beneath the pavement. No. 36 was Buffon’s home. Here he died in 1788. At No. 37 lived Daubenton. At No. 38 stood in olden days the great gate, the Porte-Royale, of the Jardin du Roi, with to its left the hall, a narrow space at that time, where the great surgeon Dionis described to a marvelling assembly of students his wonderful discoveries (1672-73). That small cabinet was the nucleus of the great anthropological museum of succeeding centuries.

In Rue Cuvier, in its early days Rue Derrière-les-Murs de Ste-Victoire, describing accurately its situation, we see at No. 20 a modern fountain (1840) on the site of one put there in 1671 and traces of the abbey St-Victor in the courtyard. The pavilion “de l’Administration” of the Garden is the ancient hôtel Jean Debray (1650), inhabited subsequently by several men of note. At No. 47 Cuvier died in 1832. In the eighteenth-century fiacres, a recently introduced manner of getting about, were to be hired at No. 45. The eleventh-century Rue Linné shows many vestiges of the past. We see Gothic arches of the vanished abbey at No. 4.

In Rue des Fossés St-Bernard, stretching along the line of Philippe-Auguste’s wall, between the site of two great gates: Porte St-Victor, a spot desecrated by the massacres of September, and Porte St-Bernard, we see Halle-aux-Vins, where abbey buildings stood of yore. The Halle-aux-Cuirs, in Rue Censier, is on the site of the famous orphanage “La Miséricorde,” called vulgarly “les Cent Filles” or “les Cent Vierges.” The apprentice from the Arts and Crafts Institution, who should choose one of these orphan maidens for his wife, obtained as her dowry the privilege of becoming at once a full member of the Corporation.

In Rue de la Clef we have at No. 56 the site of part of the notorious prison Ste-Pélagie. No. 26 is still owned by the Savouré, whose ancestors kept the school where Jerôme Bonaparte and many of his compeers were educated. Rue du Fer-à-Moulin, dating from the twelfth century, a stretch of blackened walls, has been known by many names. In the little Rue Scipion leading out of it we see at No. 13 the hôtel built in the sixteenth century for the Tuscan, Scipion Sardini, who came to France in the suite of Catherine de’ Medici, a rich and rather scandalous financier; terra-cotta medallions ornament its walls. It serves now as the bakehouse of the Paris hospitals. In the square opposite we see the curious piece of statuary: “des Boulangers,” by Charpentier.

Rue Monge, running from boulevard St-Germain to Avenue des Gobelins, was cut through old streets of the district in 1859. A fountain Louis XV brought here from its original site, Rue Childebert, was set up in the square, and many other old-time relics: statues from the ancient hôtel de Ville, débris from the Palais de l’Industrie, burnt down in 1897; a copy of the statue of Voltaire by Houdin, etc.

Rue d’Arras, so named from a college once there, began as Rue des Murs, referring to the walls of Philippe-Auguste. The concert hall we see was not long ago Père Loyson’s church. L’École Communale, No. 19 Rue des Boulangers, is on the site of part of the convent des “Filles Anglaises,” which had existed there from 1644—razed in 1861.

Rue Rollin began in the sixteenth century as Rue des Moulins-à-vent. On the site of the house at No. 2 Pascal died in 1662. No. 4, with its fine staircase, its grille and ancient well in the courtyard, was the home of Bernardine de St. Pierre, during the years he wrote his world-known Paul and Virginie. Rollin lived and died (1741) at No. 8. Descartes lived at No. 14. When the street was longer and known as Rue Neuve-St-Etienne, Manon Philipon, Madame Roland of later days, was a pupil in the annexe of the English Augustine convent on a site crossed now by Rue Monge and Rue de Navarre.

In Rue de Navarre we come to Les Arènes, the disinterred remains of the Roman Arena. They were discovered here just before the war of 1870, then quickly covered up to be in part restored to daylight in 1883. We see before us the grey stones, huge blocks and graduated step-like seats where the population of the city—Lutetians then—passed their hours of recreation watching the conflicts of wild beasts. It is not, perhaps, the original arena built here by the Romans, for that was attacked twice, first by the northern invaders, then by the Christians, many of its stones used to build the city walls. It was, however, soon restored ... evidently. In the course of subsequent invasions, conquests, new settlements, constructions and the lapse of years, the Roman theatre sank beneath the surface to be unearthed in nineteenth-century days. Modern garden paths and a grand but inharmonious entrance in Louis XIV style now surround this supremely interesting vestige of a long-gone age. Children play where savage beasts once fought. Women knit and sew, old men rest, young men and maidens woo, where Roman soldiers and a primitive Gallic population once eagerly gathered to watch fierce combats.[E]

Rue Lacépède: here at No. 1 stood till recently the Hôpital de la Pitié, founded by Marie de’ Medici in 1613, now replaced by a modern building in the boulevard de l’Hôpital. Its primary destination was a shelter for beggars—a refuge—in order to free Paris from the swarms who “gained their living” by soliciting alms in the streets. The beggars preferred their liberty. By an edict of some years later, however, beggars were taken there and closely shut up, safely guarded. They were called in consequence “les Enfermés.” The hospital grew in extent and importance and was called “Notre-Dame de la Pitié.” The convent Ste-Pélagie was organized in a part of its buildings, in 1660, to become at the Revolution the notorious prison. No. 7 is a handsome eighteenth-century hôtel. Rue Gracieuse has brought down to our time the graceful name of a family who lived there in the thirteenth century and some ancient houses. In Rue du Puits de l’Ermite lived the sculptors Coysevox, Coustou, and the painter Bourdon. The hospice for aged poor in Rue de l’Épée-de-Bois was formerly an asile founded by Sœur Rosalie, known for her self-sacrificing work among the cholera-stricken in 1832, and during the Revolution of 1848. The very name Rue des Patriarches bids us look for vestiges of past ages. The patriarchs, thus memorized, were two fourteenth-century ecclesiastics, one bishop of Paris and Alexandria, the other of Jerusalem, who dwelt in a fine old hôtel, the big courtyard of which has become a market-place, while the street named after them and a curious impasse stretch across the site of the razed mansion. The district was a centre of Calvinism during the religious struggles. The bishop’s old house, “hôtel Chanac,” sheltered numerous Protestants, and religious services were held there.

Rue de l’Arbalète carries us back to the days when archers had their garden and training-ground here. Later an apothecary’s garden was laid out where now we see the extensive modern buildings of the Institut Agronomique. A pharmaceutical school was built in this old street and medicinal herbs were cultivated from the end of the fifteenth and early years of the sixteenth centuries. Remains of a Roman cemetery were found some years ago beneath the paving-stones near No. 16.

In Rue Daubenton we find the presbytery and ancient side-entrance of St-Médard, and in the old wall distinct traces of two great gates which led to the churchyard. Traces of past time are seen also in Rue de la Pitié, where at No. 3 Robespierre’s sister lived and, in 1834, died.

Rue Cardinal-Lemoine begins across the site of the college founded by the Cardinal in 1302, suppressed at the Revolution, used subsequently as a barracks, then razed. The wall of Philippe-Auguste passed on the site of No. 26. Beneath the house a curious leaden coffin was found in 1908. At No. 49 we see the handsome but dilapidated façade of the house of the painter Lebrun, where also Watteau lived for a time. Here the Dames Anglaises had their well-known convent from 1644 to 1859, when they moved to Neuilly. At the Revolution the convent was confiscated, yet Mass was said daily in the chapel through the Terror (see pp. 11, 28).

At No. 65 we see the Collège des Écossais, founded in 1325 by David, bishop of Moray, to which a second foundation due to the bishop of Glasgow, 1639, was added, transferred here from Rue des Armendiers, by Robert Barclay in 1662. Suppressed in 1792, it was used as a prison under the Terror but restored to the Scots when Revolution days were over. The seventeenth-century chapel still stands and the heart of James II is in a casket there. The college staircase, left untouched, is remarkably fine. Close by, at the end of Rue Thouin, in what was formerly Place Fourcy, the brothers Perrault, one the famous architect, the other yet more universally known—the writer of fairy tales—lived and died. Rue de l’Estrapade recalls the days when, on the place hard by, rebellious soldiers were punished by being hoisted to the top of a pole, their hands tied behind their back, then let fall to the ground. Old-time vestiges are seen all along the street. Rue Clotilde crosses what were once the grounds of the abbey Ste-Geneviève.

CHAPTER XXI

THE LUXEMBOURG

ARRONDISSEMENT VI. (LUXEMBOURG)

THE palace that gives its name to the arrondissement was founded by Marie de’ Medici and built on the model of the Pitti palace at Florence by Salomon de Brosse between the years 1615-20. The site chosen was in the neighbourhood of the vast monastery and extensive grounds of the Chartreux. The duc de Luxembourg had an hôtel there. It was sold to the Queen and razed; but vainly was the new edifice on the spot called by its builder “Palais Médicis.” The name of the razed mansion prevailed over that of the Queen.

A garden was begun in 1613 on a space in the Abbey grounds where, in a previous age, a Roman camp had stretched.

Marie left the palace to her second son, Gaston d’Orléans. It was the abode of various royal personages till the outbreak of the Revolution. Then it became a prison. Camille Desmoulins and many of his compeers were shut up there. The Chartreux fled and their monastery was levelled with the ground. The Terror over, the palace became successively Palais des Directeurs, Sénat Conservateur, Chambre des Pairs and, in 1852, Sénat Impérial. After Sedan it became the Sénat de la République. The gardens were extended across the property of the Chartreux. They are beautiful gardens. The Renaissance fountain is the work of Jacques de Brosse. The statues we see on every side among the lawns and the flower-beds, in the shady alleys, most of them the work of noted sculptors, show us famous men and women of every period of French history from Ste-Bathilde and Ste-Geneviève to our own day.

The Petit Luxembourg is also due to Marie de’ Medici, built a few years after the completion of the larger palace. From the day of its inauguration by Richelieu it knew many inhabitants of note: Barras, Buonaparte and Joséphine, etc., sojourned there. It was used at one time as a senate house, then as a Préfecture. We see in an adjacent wall a marble mètre—the standard measure put there under the Directoire. Finally the mansion was chosen as the official residence of the president of the Senate.

Rue Vaugirard, on which the chief entrance of both these palaces open, is the longest street in Paris and one of the oldest. It is, like many another long Paris street, made up of several thoroughfares once distinct. The first of these, Rue du Val-Girad, led from the village named from its chief landowner, an abbé of St-Germain-des-Prés, Gérard de Meul. In close proximity to the Palace is the Odéon, the Second Théâtre-Français, once the “Français” itself, built in 1782, on the site of the hôtel de Condé, burnt down in 1799, rebuilt by Chalgrin, reopened in 1808 as théâtre de l’Impératrice, badly burnt a few years later, restored as the théâtre Français, then again restored in 1875. The place surrounding the theatre and the streets opening out of it are rich in historic and literary associations. No. 1, Café Voltaire, was a meeting-place of eighteenth-century men of letters of every class and type. At No. 2 lived Camille Desmoulins and his Lucile. There he was arrested. In Rue Rotrou, No. 4, now a well-known bookseller’s shop, was once the famous Café Tabourey. André Chenier lived in Rue Corneille. Rue Tournon was opened in 1540, across the site of a horse-market bearing the realistic name Pré-Crotté, on land belonging to the Chapter of St-Germain-des-Prés, and named after its abbé, Cardinal de Tournon. At No. 2, hôtel Chatillon (seventeenth century), Balzac passed three years, 1827-30. No. 4 dates from the days of Louis XIV as hôtel Jean de Palaiseau, later hôtel Montmorency. Lamartine lived here in 1848. At No. 5 lived and died the notorious devineresse Mlle Lenormand, “sybille de l’Impératrice Joséphine.” Another prophetess, Mme Moreau, lived here in the time of Napoléon III. No. 7, hôtel du Sénat et des Nations, sheltered Gambetta for a time, also Alphonse Daudet. At No. 6, hôtel de Brancas (1540), inhabited in its early years by the duchesse de Montpensier, rebuilt under the Regency, we see a very fine staircase and frescoed boudoir. Pacha lived for some years at No. 13. No. 8 dates from 1713, on the site of a more recent hôtel. At No. 10, hôtel Concini, Louis XIII lived for a time to be near his mother, Marie de’ Medici, at the Luxembourg. St. François de Sales stayed here. It served as the hôtel des Ambassadeurs Extraordinaires (1630-1748), was sequestered at the Revolution; then became a barracks as it is to-day. At No. 19 the Scot, Admiral Jones, famous for his help in the American War of Independence, died in 1791; his bones were taken to America in 1905. No. 33, the well-known restaurant Foyot, was in old days hôtel de Tréville, where royalties sometimes dined incognito. At No. 19 we come to an old curiosity shop surmounted by a barber’s pole, and on the doorpost we read the words, with their delicate flavour of irony:

When the recent war was on the patriotic barber posted up in French, in Greek, in Latin, other words, the following:

He died a few months ago, leaving to his widow his shop full of valuable antiquities.

Rue Garancière owes its euphonious name to a notable sixteenth-century firm of dyers—la Maison Garance was on the site of the present publishing house Plon. In the seventeenth century the Garance hôtel was rebuilt as a mansion for the Breton bishop, René de Rieux. After the Revolution it was for thirty years the Mairie of the district. The words “stationnement de nuit pour huit tonneaux” on the wall at No. 9 refer to a vanished market fountain. The Dental School at No. 5 was originally the home of Népomacène Lemercier. Passing through Rue Palatine memorizing Charlotte de Bavière, widow of Henri de Bourbon, who lived at one time at the Luxembourg, we turn down Rue Servandoni, so named in recent times in honour of the architect of the façade of the church St-Sulpice, who died in a house opposite No. 1 (1766). Among the bas-reliefs at No. 14 is one of Servandoni unrolling a plan of St-Sulpice. We see on every side some interesting vestiges of the past. Rue Canivet and Rue Férou show many old houses. Rue du Luxembourg is modern, built along what was once a shady alley of the garden. The Café at No. 1, Rue Fleurus, was erewhile the meeting-place of great artists: Corot, Murger and others of their time. Rue Auguste Comte is another modern street along an old alley of the garden.

Rue d’Assas, across the garden at one point, runs through the whole of this arrondissement over what were once the grounds of the two old convents: the Carmes and Cherche-Midi; it shows a few ancient houses. No. 8 is eighteenth century. No. 19, l’Institut Catholique, is the ancient Carmelite convent. George Sand lived in a house once on the site of No. 28, and Foucault, a celebrated physician who made, besides, the notable proof of the earth’s rotation by the movement of a pendulum, died here in 1868. Littré the great lexicographer died at No. 44. Michelet at No. 76.

Turning again into Rue Vaugirard we find at No. 36, the house built for the household staff of the Princesse Palatine, its kitchen communicating with the Petit Luxembourg by an underground passage; at No. 19 remains of the couvent des Dames Benedictines du Calvaire, founded 1619, and on the site of the Orangery, the Musée du Luxembourg, inaugurated in 1818, which grew out of the exhibition in 1750 of a hundred pictures in possession of the King. Massenet lived and died at No. 48. No. 50, hôtel de Trémouille, called in Revolutionary times hôtel de la Fraternité, where Mme de Lafayette died in 1692. Nos. 52 and 54 are ancient, 56 was the hôtel Kervessan (1700). We reach at No. 70 the old convent of the Carmes Déchaussés.

CHAPTER XXII

LES CARMES

THE tragic story of “les Carmes” has been repeatedly told. The convent was founded in 1613 by Princesse de Conti and la Maréchale d’Ancre for the Carmes Déchaussés, who hailed from Rome. The first stone of their chapel here, dedicated to St. Joseph, was laid by Marie de’ Medici; its dome was the first dome built in Paris; Italian masters painted frescoes on its walls. The Order became very popular among Parisians who liked the eau de Mélisse, which it was the nuns’ business, in the secular line, to make and sell, and they were respected for their goodness to the poor. When the horrors of the Revolution were filling the city with blood, the Carmes were left unmolested, some even hidden away in secret corners of the convent with the connivance of Revolutionary chiefs. Then priests who refused to take the oath of allegiance were shut up there and to-day we see, in the old crypt, the bones of more than a hundred of them, slain by a band led by a revolutionist known as “Tape-dur”—strike-hard. A prison during the Terror, Mme Tallien, Joséphine de Beauharnais, and more than seven hundred others were shut up there, led forth thence, many of them, to execution. These tragic scenes overpast, the convent was let to a manager of public fêtes: its big hall became a ballroom, “le bal des Marronniers.” That wonderful woman Camille de Soyecourt, Sœur Camille, who had previously re-organized the convent, bought it back in 1797. The garden-shed where the bodies of the murdered priests had lain was made into a memorial-chapel, razed in 1867. Then the priests’ bones were carried to the crypt where we now see them. Every year in the first week of September, anniversary of the Massacre, the convent, the crypt and the ancient garden, little changed from Revolution days, are thrown open to the public, where besides the bones of the massacred priests many interesting tombs and relics are reverently cared for. It was at the Institut Catholique in the old Carmelite buildings that the principle of wireless telegraphy was discovered, in 1890.

The ancient burial-ground of St-Sulpice lies beneath the buildings Nos. 100-102 of the long Rue Vaugirard. No. 104, the Salle Montalembert, is the ancient convent of the Pères Maristes. At No. 85 we see an old-time boundary-stone and bas-reliefs.

CHAPTER XXIII

ON ANCIENT ABBEY GROUND

NUMEROUS ancient streets and some modern ones, on time-honoured ground, lead out of Rue Vaugirard. Rue Bonaparte, extending to the banks of the Seine, was formed in 1852 of three old streets. Most of its houses are ancient or show vestiges of past ages and have historic associations. At No. 45 Gambetta dwelt in 1866. No. 36 was the home of Auguste Comte; on the site of No. 35 was the kitchen of the great abbey St-Germain-des-Prés, which stretched across the course of many streets in this district (see p. 201). No. 20, l’hôtel du duc de Vendôme, son of Henri IV and Gabrielle d’Estrées. No. 19, hôtel de Rohan-Rochefort, where the wife of the unfortunate due d’Enghien, shot at Vincennes, used to receive her exiled husband in secret when he came in disguise to Paris. No. 17 is noted as the office till recent years of the Revue des Deux Mondes, first issued there in 1829 as a magazine of travel!

No. 14, École Nationale des Beaux-Arts, on the site of the convent des Petits-Augustins, founded by Margaret de Valois in 1605, of which some walls remain and to which in the nineteenth century were added the hôtels de Conti and de Bouillon, the latter known as hôtel de Chimay. The nucleus of the works of art here seen was a collection of sculptures and other precious relics saved from buildings shattered or suppressed in the days of the Revolution, reverently laid in what was called at first a dépôt des ruines des Monuments. The word ruines was soon omitted and the dépôt became the Musée des Monuments Français, under the able direction of Lenoir. But ruins are still to be seen there, splendid and historic ruins—the façade of the château d’Anet, built for Diane de Poitiers, and remains of many another superb hôtel of bygone ages. A beautiful chapel, paintings by Delaroche, and Ingres, statuary, mouldings of Grecian and Roman sculpture, are among the treasures of the Beaux-Arts. Nos. 1 and 3, forming l’hôtel de Chevandon, was inhabited at one time by vicomte de Beauharnais, the Empress Joséphine’s first husband.

Rue des Beaux-Arts, opened a century ago, has ever been the habitation of distinguished artists and men of letters. Rue Visconti, cut across the Petit Pré-aux-Clercs, the Students’ Fields, in the sixteenth century, bore till the middle of the nineteenth century the more characteristic name Rue des Marais-St-Germain. The Visconti it memoralizes was the architect of Napoléon’s tomb and of restoration work at the Louvre. In its early years it was a resort of Huguenots, and known therefore as the “Petite Genève.” It is very narrow and nearly every house is ancient; Racine died either at No. 13 or at 21. No. 17 was the printing-house founded by de Balzac, to whom it brought ruin. No. 21, hôtel de Ranes.

Rue Jacob, lengthened in the nineteenth century by the Rue Colombier, ancient Chemin-aux-Clercs, owes its name to a chapel built by Margaret de Valois, la Reine Margot—dedicated to the Hebrew patriarch in fulfilment of a vow when the Queen was kept in durance in Auvergne. The street has always been the habitation of notable men of letters, artists, etc. Sterne lived at No. 46. No. 47, Hôpital de la Charité, another of Marie de’ Medici’s foundations, was built for the Frères de St-Jean-de-Dieu. The firm of chemists at No. 48—Rouelle—dates from 1750, formerly on the opposite side of the street. At No. 19 we see in the courtyard vestiges of the old abbey infirmary. The abbey gardens stretched across the site of several houses here. No. 26, hôtel Lefèvre d’Ormesson (1710). At No. 22 there is an eighteenth-century structure in the court called “temple de l’Amitié.” At No. 20 dwelt the great eighteenth-century actress, Adrienne Lecouvreur. In Rue Furstemburg we find vestiges of the abbey stables and coach-house.

Rue de l’Abbaye, opened in the last year of the eighteenth century, stretches across a line once in the heart of the famous abbey grounds. The first church on the site of the fine old edifice we see there now, was built under the direction of Germain, bishop of Paris, in the time of Childebert, about the middle of the sixth century, dedicated to St-Vincent and known as St-Vincent et Ste-Croix, on account of its crucifix form. Bishop Germain added a monastery. In the ninth century came the devastating Normans. The church and convent were destroyed to be rebuilt on so grand and extensive a scale two centuries later, strongly fortified, surrounded by a moat, watch-towers, etc.—a masterpiece of thirteenth-century architecture. In the eighteenth century the abbey prison was taken over by the State, the Garde Française lodged there. In September, 1792 Mme Roland, Charlotte Corday and many another notable prisoner of those terrible days were shut up within its walls. The fine library and beautiful refectory were burnt and there, that fatal September, saw some three hundred victims of Revolutionary fury put to death, the greater number slain on the spot where Rue Buonaparte touches the place in front of the church. The prison stood till 1857. The church is full within as without of intensely interesting architectural and historic features: its tower is the most ancient church tower of the city. In the little garden square we see the ruins of the lady-chapel built by Pierre de Montereau, architect of the Ste-Chapelle. The Gothic roof, the round-arched nave, the splendid chapel of the Sacré-Cœur, once the church choir, with its pillars coloured deep red, the wonderful capitals of the chancel, the old glass in the chapel Ste-Geneviève, the tombs and the statues, and Flandrin’s glorious frescoes, all appeal to the lover of the beautiful and the historic. Of the houses in the vicinity of the church many are ancient, others are on the site of abbey buildings swept away. No. 3 Rue de l’Abbaye, the abbey palace, dates from 1586, built with a subterranean passage by Cardinal Charles de Bourbon. The last abbot who dwelt there was Casimir, King of Poland, whose tomb is in the church. In modern times it has served as a studio and is now a dispensary. At No. 13 we see the last traces of the monastery with its thirteenth-century cloister. At No. 15 Rue St-Benoît are the remains of an old tower; at No. 11 vestiges of an ancient wall; at No. 2, an old house once the abode of Marc Orry, a famous printer of the days of Henri IV. Through pipes down this old street water once flowed from the Seine to the abbey, and it went by the name Rue de l’Égout. The painter of the last portrait of Marie-Antoinette lived for some time at No. 17.

Rue du Four, i.e. Oven Street, the site in olden days of the abbey bakehouse, and one of the most important streets of the abbey precincts, bearing in its early days the royal name Chaussée du Roi, has been almost entirely rebuilt in modern times. Here and there we find traces of another age. Robespierre lived here.

Rue du Vieux-Colombier, recalling by its name the abbey dove-cot, has known among its inhabitants Boileau, Lesage, the husband of Mme Récamier. Few ancient houses are left there now. We see bas-reliefs at No. 1.

Rue de Mézières is so called from the hôtel Mézières given in 1610 to the Jesuits as their noviciat. No. 9 is ancient. Rue Madame, which it crosses, existed under different names from the sixteenth century, part of it as Rue du Gindre, a reference to the abbey bakehouse once near, for a gindre is the baker’s chief man. The name of Madame was given in 1790 to the part newly opened across the Luxembourg gardens by the new occupant of the palace, the comte de Province, brother of Louis XVI, in honour of his wife. That did not hinder the count from building in the same street a fine mansion for his mistress, comtesse de Balbi, razed some years ago. Flandrin lived at No. 54. Renan at No. 55. Rue Cassette shows us a series of past-time houses, many of them associated with the memory of notable persons of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. Alfred de Musset lived there. No. 12 was in the hands of the Carmelites till the Revolution. No. 21 belonged to the Jesuits till their expulsion in 1672. In the garden of No. 24 the vicar of St-Sulpice lay hidden after escaping from the Carmes at the time of the Massacre. Rue Honoré-Chevalier, in the days of Henri IV Rue du Chevalier Honoré, shows in its name another link with the abbey bakehouse, for it was that of the master-baker who cut the street across his own property.

The church St-Sulpice, with its very characteristic façade, the work of Servandoni, was begun in the middle of the seventeenth century on the site of a thirteenth-century church dedicated to St. Pierre, but was not finished till nearly a century later. Servandoni’s towers were disapproved of; one was demolished and rebuilt by Chalgrin. The other remains as Servandoni designed it. Entering the church we see its walls covered with frescoes and paintings; they are all by celebrated artists. Those in the lady-chapel by Van Loo, the rest by Delacroix and other masters of modern times. The high altar is unusually large. The shells for holy water were a gift from the Republic of Venice to François I. The pulpit with its carved figures was given by Richelieu. In the Chapelle-des-Étudiants is an organ that belonged to Marie-Antoinette for the use of her young son, and has been played by Glück and Mozart. A sacrilegious fête was held in the church in Revolution days and a great banquet given in honour of Napoléon. The grand organ is very fine, its woodwork designed by Chalgrin. The services are noted for the beauty of their music. The place dates from 1800, built on the site of the ancient seminary “des Sulpiciens,” razed by Napoléon. The present Séminaire, no longer a seminary—forfeited to the State in 1906—was built in 1820-25. The immense fountain was put up there nearly half a century later, an old smaller one taken away.

Almost parallel with Rue Bonaparte the old Rue de Seine stretches from the banks of the river to Rue St-Sulpice. It dates in its most ancient part from 1250 as the Pré-aux-Clercs road. No. 1 is a dependency of the Institute. No. 6 is on the site of a palais built by la Reine Margot on leaving l’hôtel de Sens, some traces of which are seen among the buildings on the spot, and part of the Queen’s gardens. No. 10 was formerly the Art School of Rosa Bonheur. At No. 12 are vestiges of l’hôtel de la Roche-Guyon and Turenne (1620). Nos. 41, 42, 57, 56, 101 show interesting seventeenth-century features. Rue Mazarine is another parallel street—a street of ancient houses. No. 12 is notable as the site of the Jeu de Paume, a tennis-court, where in 1643 Molière set up his Illustre théâtre. No. 30, hôtel des Pompes, where died in 1723 the founder of the Paris Fire Brigade; a remarkable man he ... an actor in Molière’s troup, the father of thirty-two children! On the site of No. 42 stood once another tennis-court, which became the théâtre Guénégaud, where the first attempts at Opera were made.

Rue de Nesle, till the middle of last century Rue d’Anjou-Dauphine, stretches across the site of part of the famous hôtel de Nesle; a subterranean passage formerly ran beneath it. The interesting house No. 8 is one of the many said to be a palace of la Reine Blanche, the mother of St. Louis. There were, however, as a matter of fact, many “Reines Blanches” in France in olden times, for royal French widows wore white, not black for mourning.

Rue de Nevers (thirteenth century) was in past days closed at both ends and called therefore Rue des Deux-Portes. In Rue Guénégaud we find at No. 29 a tower of Philippe-Auguste’s wall. All its houses are ancient. At No. 1 we see the remains of a famous théâtre des Marionnettes.

Rue de l’Ancienne-Comédie, in a line with Rue Mazarine, erewhile Rue des Fossés-St-Germain, is full of historic memories. The Café Procope at No. 13, now a restaurant, was the first café opened in Paris (1689). Noted men of every succeeding century drank, talked, made merry or aired their grievances within its walls: modern paintings there record the features of some of them. No. 14 was the theatre from which the street takes its name, succeeded by the Odéon (see p. 184). Rue Grégoire-de-Tours shows us several curious old houses. At No. 32 we see finely chiselled statues on the façade. Rue de Buci, originally Rue de Bussy from the buis—box-bush—once growing there, the ecclesiastical “Via Sancti Germani de Pratis,” later Rue du Pilori, passed in ancient days through Philippe-Auguste’s wall by a great gate with two towers opened for the purpose. For it was an all-important thoroughfare. The carrefour whence it started was the busiest spot of the whole district. Persons of ill-repute or evil conduct were chained there; those condemned to death were hung there. Sedan chairs for the peaceable were hired there. Thither Revolutionist volunteers flocked to be enrolled in 1792, and there the first of the September massacres was perpetrated. Most of the ancient buildings along its course have been replaced by modern structures. The street has been in part widened; the site of some old structures lately razed has not yet been built on.

Rue Dauphine, named in honour of the son of Henri IV, later Louis XIII, dates from 1607. Most of the houses date from that century or the century following. Rue Mazet, opening out of it at No. 49, was famed in past days for the old inn and coaching station—“le Cheval Blanc.” It existed from 1612 to 1906. Near it was the restaurant Magny, where literary lions of the early years of the nineteenth century—G. Sand, Flaubert, the Goncourts, etc.—met and dined. Some old houses still stand there.

Rue St-André-des-Arts, where in ancient days dwelt the makers and vendors of “arcs,” i.e. bows, and along which the pious passed to pray at St-André on abbey territory for those who had suffered death by burning, (les Arsis) was in long-gone times a vine-bordered path reaching to the city wall. It was known at one time as Rue St-Germain, and was a great shoemaking street. It is rich in vestiges of the past. Almost every house has interesting features. The modern Lycée Fénelon at No. 45, the first girls’ lycée in Paris, stands on the site of the ancient hôtel of the ducs d’Orléans. No. 52, hôtel du Tillet-de-la-Bussière. Nos. 47-49, on the site of the ancient mansion of the Kings of Navarre and of the Vieuville, of which some traces are still seen. At No. 11, a house on the site of the place where stood the old church, Gounod was born in 1818. Opening out of it is the Passage du Commerce-St-André, cut in 1776, across the site of Philippe-Auguste’s great wall of which, at No. 4, we find the base of a tower, and in the Cour de Rohan, more correctly perhaps Rouen, a very perfect fragment of the city rampart. The archbishops of Rouen had an hôtel here, and the vestiges we see before us are those of a mansion built on its site by King Henri II for Diane de Poitiers. Rue des Grands-Augustins, in part on the site of an ancient Augustine convent, was, in the thirteenth century, Rue l’Abbé de St-Denis. Many of its houses show interesting traces of the past. The reputed restaurant Lapérouse at No. 1 is a Louis XV hôtel. At No. 5 and No. 7 remains of the ancient hôtel d’Hercule, noted for its mythological paintings and tapestries, once the Paris abode of the princess of Savoie Carignan. At No. 3 Rue Pont de Lodi, opening at No. 6, we see traces of the convent refectory. Littré was born at No. 21 (1808). In 1841 Heine lived at No. 25. Sardou in his youth at No. 26. Augustin Thierry lived for ten years in a house near the quay.

Almost every house in Rue Christine, named after the second daughter of Henri IV, dates from the seventeenth century.

CHAPTER XXIV

IN THE VICINITY OF PLACE ST-MICHEL

AN ancient place and part of the old Rue de l’Hirondelle, and an ancient chapel stretched in bygone days where now we see the broad new Place St-Michel. The colossal fountain we see there was put up in 1860, replacing a seventeenth-century fountain on the ancient place, which lay a little more to the south. Of the boulevard—the famous “Boule Miche”—we will speak later (see p. 306).

Turning into Rue de l’Hirondelle, in the twelfth century Rue l’Arondale-en-Laac, then Rue Herondalle, we see remains of the ancient Collège d’Antin, founded in 1371, and an eighteenth-century house on the site of the mansion of the bishop of Chartres previously there. Rue Gît-le-Cœur, probably indicated in fourteenth-century days the dwelling-place of the King’s cook ... Gille his name; cœur, a misspelling for queux, cook. At No. 5 we see remains of hôtel Séguier.

Rue Séguier was a thoroughfare, a country road in Childebert’s time; in the fourteenth century it became a street with the name Pavée-St-André-des-Arts. Every house has some interesting feature. The famous Hostellerie St-François till the eighteenth century on the site of No. 3, was the starting-point of the coaches for Normandy and Brittany. At No. 6 we see traces of the hôtel de Nemours. The Frères Cordonniers de St-Crépin, founded in 1645 (Shoemakers’ Confraternity), had its quarters where we see the Nos. 9, 11, 13. J. de Ste-Beuve, the Jansenist, was born and in 1677 died at No. 17. At No. 18 we see all that is left of a fourteenth-century hôtel de Nevers on the site of an older hôtel. The burial-ground of the church St-André stretched along part of Rue Suger: the presbytery was on the site of No. 13. Every house in this narrow old street tells of past days. At No. 3 we find traces of the chapel of the Collège de Boissy, founded in 1360 by a Canon of Chartres for seven poor students. Another old-time college stood in Rue de l’Éperon and till 1907, an ancient house, a dependency of the church St-André-des-Arts. Rue Serpente, a winding road in its earliest days, a street about the year 1200, was the site of the celebrated hôtel Serpente, and of the firm of printers where Tallien was an employé. The very modern Rue Danton, with its emphatically up-to-date structure in re-enforced concrete, has swept away a host of ancient houses. The hôtel des Sociétés Savantes is on the site of the hôtel de Thou, l’hôtel des États-de-Blois in the time of Louis XV.

Rue Mignon, twelfth century, recalls yet another college founded in 1343 by a dignitary of Chartres of this name; ancient houses at Nos. 1 and 5.

The most interesting of these old streets is Rue Hautefeuille with its two turrets, one at No. 5, the ancient hôtel of the Abbots of Fécamp, fourteenth century, the other octagonal, at No. 21, on the corner of what was once part of the Collège Damville of the same date: there in Roman times stood the castle Altum Folium—Hautefeuille—of which remains were found in the fourteenth century. This old street was no doubt a road leading to the citadel.

CHAPTER XXV

L’ODÉON

AN interesting corner of Old Paris lies on the north-east side of the Odéon. Rue Racine, opening on the place before the theatre, runs through the ancient territory of the Cordeliers. Vestiges of a Roman cemetery were found in recent years beneath the soil at No. 28, and at No. 11 were unearthed traces of the city wall of Philippe-Auguste. George Sand lived for a time at No. 3. Rue de l’École de Médecine was once in part Rue des Cordeliers, in part Rue des Boucheries-St-Germain, a name telling its own tale. No less than twenty-two butchers’ shops flourished here. At the outbreak of the Revolution a butcher was president of the famous club des Cordeliers established in the ancient convent chapel (1791-94). The refectory, the church-like structure we see at No. 15, now an anatomy museum, built by Anne of Bretagne in the fifteenth century, is all that remains of the convent buildings dating in part from the early years of the twelfth century, which covered a great part of this district from the days of Louis IX. Many of these buildings were put to secular uses before the outbreak of the Revolution. The cloister stood till 1877, made into a prison, then was razed to make room for the École de Médecine built in part with the ancient cloister stones. The chapel stood on what is now Place de l’École-de-Médecine. The amphitheatre of the School of Surgery at No. 5, an association founded by St. Louis, dates from the end of the seventeenth century on the site of an older structure. Above the cellars at No. 4 stood in olden days the College of Damville. The Faculté de Médecine at No. 12 is on the site of the Collège-Royal de Bourgogne, founded in 1331. The first stone of the present building was laid by Louis XVI. The edifice was enlarged in later days, restored in 1900. The bas-relief on its frontal, sculptured as a figure of Louis XV, was by order of the Commune transformed in 1793 into the woman draped we see there now. Skulls of famous persons, some noted criminals, may be seen at the Museum. Marat lived and died in Rue des Cordeliers. There Charlotte Corday was seized by the enraged mob. Traces of the ancient convent may be seen in the short Rue Antoine-Dubois. Rue Dupuytren lies across what was the convent graveyard. Nos. 7-9 were dependencies of the old convent. No. 7 was later a free school of drawing directed by Rosa Bonheur. Rue Monsieur-le-Prince, so named in 1806, because of the vicinity of the hôtel du Prince de Condé, was in olden days Chemin des Fossés. We see there many characteristic houses. Auguste Comte died at No. 10 in 1857.

CHAPTER XXVI

ROUND ABOUT THE CARREFOUR DE LA CROIX-ROUGE

PASSING to the western half of the arrondissement, we turn into the modern Rue de Rennes, running south from Place St-Germain-des-Prés along the lines of razed convent buildings or their vanished gardens. The short Rue Gozlin opening out of it dates from the thirteenth century, its present name recording that of a bishop of Paris who defended the city against invading Normans in the ninth century. Two only of the houses we see there now are ancient, Nos. 1 and 5. At No. 50 we see the seventeenth-century entrance of the old Cour du Dragon, with its balcony and huge piece of sculpture dating from 1735; the quaint houses of the alley, with its gutter in the middle, were in past days the habitation of ironmongers. It leads down into the old Rue du Dragon, which began as Rue du Sépulcre, being then the property of the monks of St-Sépulcre. A fine hôtel stood once at either end. At No. 76 we see the remains of a mansion, taken later for a convent, where Bossuet sojourned. Nos. 147-127 are on the site of a Roman cemetery.

Rue Cherche-Midi, once Chasse-Midi, takes its name from an ancient sign-board illustrating the old French proverb: “Chercher midi à quatorze heures,” i.e. to look for something wide of the mark. Many old-time houses still stand along its course. It starts from the Carrefour de la Croix-Rouge, where, before a cross in the centre of the Carrefour, criminals and political offenders were put to death. The name is probably due to a sign-board rather than to the alleged colour of this cross. In this quiet spot, as historians have remarked, a flaring red cross would hardly have been in keeping with the temper of its patrician inhabitants. The Revolutionists called it Carrefour du Bonnet-Rouge. At No. 12 we see a fine grille. One of the most interesting historically inhabited hôtels of the city stood till 1907 on the site of No. 37, in olden times the dependency of a convent, latterly hôtel des Conseils-de-Guerre, razed to make way for the brand-new boulevard Raspail. The military prison opposite is on the site of a convent organized in the house of an exiled Calvinist, razed in 1851. Nos. 85, 87, 89, eighteenth century, belonged to a branch of the Montmorency—knew successive inhabitants of historic fame and illustrious name. A fine fountain is seen in the Cour des Vieilles-Tuileries at No. 86. Several old shorter streets lead out of this long one. In Rue St-Romain, named after an old-time Prior of St-Germain-des-Prés, we see the fine old hôtel de M. de Choiseul, now the headquarters of the National Savings Bank. Rue St-Placide, seventeenth century, recording the name of a celebrated Benedictine monk, shows some ancient vestiges. Huysmans died at No. 31 in 1907. In Rue Dupin, once Petite Rue du Bac, we see ancient houses at Nos. 19-12, in the latter a carved wood Louis XIII staircase. Rue du Regard, another “Chemin Herbu” of past days, records by its present name the existence of an old fountain once here, now placed near the fountain Médici of the Luxembourg gardens. The publishing house Didot at No. 3 is on the site of a handsome ancient mansion once the home of the children of Mme de Montespan, sacrificed to the boulevard Raspail in 1907. Nos. 5-7 date from the first years of the eighteenth century. The doors of the Mont de Pitié are all that is left of hôtel de la Guiche once on the site.

Rue de Sèvres, forming in the greater part of its course the boundary between arrondissements VI and VII, running on into arrondissement XV, was known familiarly in old days as Rue de la Maladrerie, on account of its numerous hospitals. They are numerous still. At No. 11 and No. 13 we find remains of the couvent des Prémontrés Réformés founded by Anne d’Autriche, 1661. Rue Récamier was recently opened on the site of the famous Abbaye-aux-Bois, where for thirty years Mme de Récamier lived the “simple life,” courted none the less by a crowd of ardent admirers—the tout Paris of that day. The Abbaye, as a convent, counted notable women among its abbesses; at the Revolution it was suppressed and let out in flats till its regrettable demolition in 1908. The Square Potain close by, now known as Square du Bon Marché, is on the site of a leper-house which dated from the reign of Philippe-Auguste. A convent and adjoining buildings of ancient date were destroyed to allow boulevard Raspail to pursue its course. An old house still stands at No. 26; vestiges at No. 31. At No. 42 we see the Hospice des Incurables, founded in 1634 by Cardinal de la Rochefoucauld and known since 1878 as l’Hospice Laennec. Here in 1819 died the woman Simon, the jailer of the little dauphin “Louis XVII,” after a sojourn of twenty-five years. The minister Turgot and other persons of note lie buried in the chapel. The Egyptian fountain dates from 1806. At No. 84 we see very recently erected houses let out in flats on the site of the couvent des Oiseaux, dating from the early years of the eighteenth century—the prison du Bonnet Rouge during the Revolution, a convent school and pension in 1818 till its suppression in 1906. The “Oiseaux”—birds—were perhaps those of an aviary, or maybe those painted by Pigalle on the walls of one of the rooms. The Lazarist convent at No. 95 was previously a private mansion dating from the time of Louis XV. The chapel dates from 1827 and sheltered for some years the remains of St-Vincent-de-Paul. In the eighteenth century, on the site of No. 125, wild beast fights took place. The last numbers of the street are in arrondissement XV. There we see the ancient Benedictine convent, suppressed in 1779—become l’Hôpital Necker. The hospital at No. 149 began life in 1676 as a community of “gentilshommes”; seventy years later it was the “Maison Royale de l’Enfant-Jésus” under the patronage of Marie Leczinska, enlarged by the gift of an adjoining mansion. Closed at the Revolution, it served for a time as a coal-store, then became a National orphanage, and in 1802 the “Enfants Malades”; its ancient chapel was replaced by the chapel we see under Napoléon III.

CHAPTER XXVII

HÔTEL DES INVALIDES

ARRONDISSEMENT VII. (PALAIS-BOURBON)

IT was Henri IV, le bon Roi, who first planned the erection of a special hôtel to shelter aged and wounded soldiers. Meanwhile they were lodged in barracks in different parts of the city. The fine hôtel we know was built by Louis XIV, opened in 1674, restored in after years by Napoléon I, and again by Napoléon III. The greatest military names of France figure in the list of its governors.

On July 14th, 1789, the Paris mob rushed to the Invalides for arms wherewith to storm the Bastille. On the 30th of March, 1814, nearly fifteen hundred flags and trophies were destroyed in a great bonfire made in the court to prevent them from falling into the hands of the enemy Allies. But the chapel is still hung with flags and trophies taken in wars long overpast and three museums—le Musée Historique, le Musée d’Artillerie, le Musée des Plans-en-relief—have been important features at les Invalides since 1905. The ancient refectory has become la Salle-des-Armures, decorated with frescoes illustrative of the great battles of bygone days from the time of Louis XIV onward. The big cannons—la batterie triomphale—we see behind the moats are those captured in the Napoléonic wars. Now in these poignant days of unparalleled warfare, immense cannons of the most up-to-date construction, monstrous airships, broken zeppelins, are gathered in the great courtyards. In the chapel St-Louis we see the tombs of distinguished soldiers and memorials in honour of the heroes of old-time war-days. The dome-church, separated from it by the immense stained-glass window, was built as a special chapel for the King and Court, its dome decorated with paintings by the greatest artists of the time. The sumptuous tomb of Napoléon I, the work of Visconti, was placed there in the second half of the nineteenth century.

The gravestone from St-Helena and other souvenirs were put in the chapel St-Nicolas in 1910. Of late years no new pensioners were received, veterans of war-days past were for long the sole inhabitants of the soldiers’ quarters—the only “invalides.” Now the institution is once more to be peopled with a crowd of disabled heroes, victims of the terrible war.

Avenue de Tourville, planned when the hôtel des Invalides was built, was not opened till the century following. Of the four avenues opening out of it, Avenue de Ségur, Avenue de Villars, Avenue de Breteuil, opened in 1780, record the names of distinguished generals of Napoléon’s time, but show us no historic structures. In Avenue de Lowenthal we see the façade of l’École Militaire, a vast building reaching to Avenue de la Motte-Picquet. It dates from 1752, the work of Gabriel, and was originally destined for the military education of five hundred “young gentlemen.” Under the Convention it was turned into a flour store. Restored as a school, the “Enfants de Mars”—military students of all ranks—were admitted there. Young Buonaparte, come from Corsica to study in Paris, spent a year here and was confirmed in its chapel, now used for storing clothes. When that young student had made himself Emperor, the Imperial Guard took up their quarters here—to be followed after 1824 by the Royal Guard. Under Napoléon III the building was considerably changed.

At No. 13 boulevard des Invalides we catch a glimpse of the former couvent du Sacré-Cœur, the old hôtel Biron: its chief entrance is Rue de Varennes (see p. 194). No. 41 was l’hôtel de Condé. No. 50 l’hôtel de Richepanse. No. 52 l’hôtel de Masserano. No. 56 is the Institution Nationale des Jeunes Aveugles, a modern structure, its foundation dating from 1791, one of the last foundations of Louis XVI. The statue we see is that of Valentin Haüy, its original organizer.

Boulevard de la Tour Maubourg is lined by fine hôtels, all modern, only the names of their owners recalling days past. Avenue de la Motte-Picquet is equally devoid of historic interest, save as regards l’École-Militaire (see p. 191). But turning aside from these fine latter-day avenues, we find in the vicinity of the Invalides several of the oldest historic streets of the Rive Gauche.

Rue de Babylone existed under other names from the early years of the fifteenth century. Its present designation is in memory of Bernard de Ste-Thérèse, bishop of Babylone, who owned property there whereon, at No. 22, was built in 1663 the Séminaire des Missions Étrangères. At No. 20 we see the statue of Notre-Dame de la Paix with the inscription: “l’Original de cette image est un chef d’œuvre si parfait que le Tout-Puissant qui l’a fait s’est renfermé dans son ouvrage.” At No. 21 live “sisters” of St-Vincent-de-Paul, so active always in Christian work and service. No. 32 is the ancient Petit hôtel Matignon. No. 33 is the property of the sisters of No. 21. At No. 49 we see the ancient barracks of les Gardes Françaises, so gallantly defended by the Suisses in July, 1830.

In the short Rue Monsieur (the Monsieur of the day was the brother of Louis XVI), we find at No. 12 the hôtel built for Mademoiselle de Bourbon-Condé, aunt of the duc d’Enghien, abbesse de Remiremont, who lies buried beneath the pavement of the Benedictine convent at No. 20. No. 5 shows us remains of the hôtel of duc de Saint-Simon, the famous diarist-historian. Passing up Rue Barbet de Jouy, cut in 1838 across the site of an ancient mansion, we come to Rue de Varennes, a long line of splendid dwellings dating from a past age.

CHAPTER XXVIII

OLD-TIME MANSIONS OF THE RIVE GAUCHE

ARRONDISSEMENT VII. PALAIS-BOURBON

THE word Varennes is a corruption of Garennes: in English the Rue de Varennes would be Warren Street, a name leading us back in thought to the remote age when the district was wild, uncultivated land full of rabbit-warrens. Another street joined to Rue de Varennes in 1850, and losing thus its own name, made it the long street we enter. No. 77 is the handsome mansion and park built early in the eighteenth century by Gabriel for a parvenu wig-maker. Later it was l’hôtel de Maine, then hôtel Biron, to become in 1807 the well-known convent of the Sacré-Cœur. From its convent-days dates the chapel—now the Musée Rodin. Other dependencies of the same date, built to house the nuns, were razed after their evacuation in 1904, when educational congregations were suppressed. The State, in possession of the domain, let it out for a time in logements, used it for a brief period as a National School, then let the whole property to the great sculptor, Rodin, who always had his eye on fine old buildings threatened with degradation or destruction. “I could weep,” he once said to me, “when I see fine historic walls ruthlessly razed to the ground.” The disaffected chapel became his studio and he set about maturing the plan, faithfully carried out after his death, of organizing there a national museum. He offered the whole of his own works and all the precious works of art he had collected to the State for this purpose. A clause in the treaty stipulates that in the possible but unlikely event of the restitution of the chapel building, after a lapse of years, to religious authorities, it be replaced as a museum by a new structure in the grounds. No. 73 is hôtel de Broglie, 1775. No. 69 hôtel de Clermont, 1714. No. 80 is the Ministère du Commerce. No. 78 the Ministère de l’Agriculture, built in 1712 as the habitation of an actrice. No. 65 began as l’hôtel de la Marquise de la Suze, 1787, to become l’hôtel Rochefoucauld-Doudeauville. No. 72 l’hôtel de Dufour, 1700. No. 64 was an eighteenth-century inn. No. 57, l’hôtel de Matignon, made over by the duchesse de Galliera after her husband’s death to the Emperor of Austria, became the Austrian Embassy—till 1914. Numerous have been the persons of historic name and note who stayed or lived at this grand old mansion. It was owned at one time by Talleyrand, whose home was next door at No. 55; by the comte de Paris, who on the marriage of his daughter Amélie and Don Carlo of Portugal, in 1886, gave there a fête so magnificent that it led to the banishment of the Orléans and other princely families of France on the ground of royalist propaganda. Nos. 62-60 are ancient. No. 58 l’hôtel d’Auroy, 1750; l’hôtel Rochefoucauld in 1775. No. 56 l’hôtel de Gouffier, 1760. No. 55 l’hôtel d’Angennes. Nos. 52-52 bis l’hôtel de Guébriant. No. 47 l’hôtel de Jaucourt, 1788, later de Rochefoucauld-Dundeauville. No. 48 the hôtel de Charles Skelton. Monseigneur de Ségur was born here in 1820. No. 45 is l’hôtel de Cossé-Brissac, 1765. No. 46 the petit hôtel de Narbonne-Pelet. Nos. 43-41 l’hôtel d’Avrincourt. At No. 23 are vestiges of l’hôtel St-Gelais, 1713. No. 21 is l’hôtel de Narbonne-Pelet. No. 22 l’hôtel de Biron, 1775. No. 19 l’hôtel de Chanterac. In its passage here as elsewhere Boulevard Raspail has swept away venerable buildings.

The Esplanade on the northern side of the hôtel des Invalides, once Plaine-des-Prés-St-Germain, stretches between three long and old-world streets—Rue de Grenelle, Rue St-Dominique, Rue de l’Université—all crossing the 7th arrondissement in almost its entire extent.

Rue de Grenelle, in the fifteenth century Chemin de Garnelle, then Chemin des Vaches, a country road, has near its higher end where we start two ancient streets leading out of it, Rue de la Comète (1775), named to record the passage of the famous comet of 1763, where at No. 19 we see a curious old courtyard, and Rue de Fabert with an ancient one-storied house at its corner. No. 127 hôtel de Charnac, abbé de Pompadour, was the palace Mgr. Richard was forced to give up in 1906—now Ministère du Travail. Nos. 140-138, a fine mansion built in 1724, inhabited till the eighteenth century by noblemen of mark, is now hôtel de l’État-Major de l’Armée and Service Géographique de l’Armée. At No. 115, formerly l’hôtel du Marquis de Saumery, the actrice Adrienne Lecouvreur died and was secretly buried. The short Rue de Martignac, opening at No. 130, showing no noteworthy feature, was built in 1828 on the ancient grounds of the Carmelites and the Dames de Bellechasse. No. 105 belonged to Berryer, the famous lawyer, 1766, then to Lamoignon de Basville. No. 122, l’hôtel d’Artagnan, to Maréchal de Montesquieu. At No. 101 l’hôtel d’Argenson, 1700, where Casimir Perier died of cholera in 1832; now Ministère de Commerce de l’Industrie. No. 118 l’hôtel de Villars, etc., has very beautiful woodwork. No. 116, the Mairie since 1865, an ancient hôtel transformed and enlarged in modern times. No. 110 l’hôtel Rochechouart, built on land taken from the nuns of Bellechasse, inhabited at one time by Marshal Lames, duc de Montebello, is the Ministère de l’Instruction Publique. At No. 97 Saint Simon wrote his diaries and in 1755 died here. No. 106, in 1755 Temple du Panthémont, the abode of a community of nuns from the Benedictine abbey near Beauvais, was sold in lots after the Revolution; its chapel was taken for a Protestant church. No. 87, known in a past age as hôtel de Grimberghe, has a fine staircase. No. 104 formed part of the Panthémont convent. No. 85, l’hôtel d’Avaray 1718, abode, in 1727, of Horace Walpole when ambassador. No. 83 hôtel de Bonneval, 1763. No. 81, Russian Embassy, was built by Cotte in 1709 for the duchesse d’Estrées. No. 102 was built by Lisle Mansart in the first years of the eighteenth century. At No. 90 we turn for an instant into Rue St-Simon to look at the Latin inscriptions on Nos. 4-2, dating, however, only from 1881. No. 77, École Libre, originally l’hôtel de la Motte-Houdancourt, was inhabited in recent times by marquis de Gallifet. No. 75, seventeenth century, built by Cardinal d’Estrées. No. 88 l’hôtel de Noailles. No. 73, Italian Embassy, built by Legrand in 1775. At No. 71, annexed to the Italian Embassy, the duke of Alba died in 1771.

The fine Fontaine des Quatre Saisons, dating from 1737, erected by Bouchandon, was inaugurated by Turgot, Prévôt des Marchands in 1749. Here, at No. 59, Alfred de Musset lived and wrote from 1824 to 1840. No. 36, “A la Petite Chaise,” dates from 1681; No. 25, hôtel de Hérissey, from 1747. No. 15 is on the site of an ancient hôtel Beauvais. No. 20 Petit hôtel de Beauvais, 1687. The modern house and garage at Nos. 16-18 are on the site of a house owned by a nephew of La Fontaine and which was inhabited by the Beauharnais. At No. 11 we find vestiges of the hôtel of Pierre de Beauvais, a fine mansion, where the Doge of Venise, come to Paris to make obeisance to Louis XIV, stayed in 1686; a convent subsequently, then the Mairie of the district till 1865, when the lengthening of Rue des Saints-Pères swept it away.

Rue St-Dominique, like Rue de Grenelle in ancient days a country road—“Chemin aux Vaches,” then “Chemin de la Justice”—grew into a thoroughfare of fine hôtels, some still standing, others swept away by the cutting of the modern boulevard St-Germain or incorporated in the newer hôtels there. It is the district of the Gros Caillou, the great stone, which once marked the bounds of the abbey grounds of St-Germain-des-Prés. The fountain at No. 129, dating from the early years of the nineteenth century, is by Beauvalet. The Hygia healing a warrior we see sculptured there reminds us of the military hospital recently demolished. The church St-Pierre du Gros-Caillou dates from 1738, on the site of a chapel built there in 1652. In the court at No. 94 we find an old pavilion. A curious old house at No. 74, an old courtyard at No. 66. At No. 81 an ancient inn had once the sign “Le Canon ci-devant Royal.” No. 67 was the “Palais des Vaches laitières.” No. 32 l’hôtel Beaufort. No. 57 l’hôtel de Sagan, built in 1784 for the princesse de Monaco, née Brignole-Salé, now in the hands of an antiquarian. No. 53 l’hôtel de la princesse de Kunsky, 1789. At No. 49 we find an eighteenth-century hôtel in the court. The fine hôtel at No. 28, 1710, was at one time the Nunciate. No. 47 l’hôtel de Seiguelay, where at the beginning of the nineteenth century gas, newly invented, was first used. No. 45 hôtel Comminges. No. 43 hôtel de Ravannes. No. 41 is ancient. At Nos. 22-20 we see the name of the street ” ... Dominique,” the word saint suppressed in Revolution days. No. 35 l’hôtel de Broglie. Nos. 16-14, built in 1730, now the War Minister’s official dwelling (1730), in Napoléon’s time the Paris home of his mother, “Madame Laetitia.” In the first of these two hôtels, joined to make one, we see Louis XV woodwork decorations, “Empire” decorations in the other. No. 33 l’hôtel Panouse.

The church Ste-Clotilde, 1846-56, is built on the site of a demolished Carmelite convent. The fine bas-reliefs by Pradier and Duret are the best work there. Nos. 12, 10, 8, Ministère de la Guerre since 1804, was once the couvent des Filles de St-Joseph, founded 1640. No. 11, site of the Pavillon de Bellechasse, the home of Mme de Genlis. Nos. 5-3 l’hôtel de Tavannes. Gustave Doré died at No. 5, in 1883. No. 1, hôtel of duc de Mortemart, built 1695, where we see an oval court.

Rue de l’Université, so long and interesting a thoroughfare, recalls the days when the Pré-aux-Clercs through which it was cut was the classic promenade of Paris students. It was known in its early days as Rue de la Petite-Seyne, then as Rue du Pré-aux-Clercs. The seventeenth century saw a series of lawsuits between the landowners and the University, the latter claiming certain rights and privileges there. The University was the losing party, the only right conceded to Alma Mater was that of giving her name to the old street. No. 182, an ancient garde-meuble and statuary dépôt, was in recent days Rodin’s atelier. No. 137 was built about 1675 with the stones left over at the building of les Invalides. No. 130, Ministère des Affaires Étrangères, is modern. No. 128 the official dwelling of the président de la Chambre. No. 126 Palais Bourbon (see p. 304). No. 108, Turgot died here in 1781. No. 102 was the abode of the duc d’Harcourt in 1770. The side of the Ministère de la Guerre we see at No. 73, a modern erection, is on the site of several historic hôtels demolished to make way for it and for the new boulevard. Lamartine lived at No. 88 in 1848, after living in 1843 at No. 80. No. 78 was built by Harduin-Mansart in the seventeenth century. No. 72 was l’hôtel de Guise (1728). Mme Atkins (see p. 205) lived at l’hôtel Mailly, in what is now Rue de Villersexel, in 1816. The remarkably fine hôtel de Soyecourt at No. 51 dates from 1775. No. 43 l’hôtel de Noailles. Alphonse Daudet died at No. 41 (1897). No. 35 was the home of Valdeck-Rousseau. The Magasins du Petit-St-Thomas, built on the site of the ancient hôtel de l’Université (seventeenth century), inhabited at one time by the duc de Valentinois, by Henri d’Aguesseau, etc., have been razed to make way for a big new bank. Montyon, the philanthropist, founder of the Virtue prizes given yearly by the French Academy, died at No. 23 in the year 1820 (see p. 225). No. 15 built in 1685 for a notable Fermier-général. No. 13 was in 1772 the site of the Venetian Embassy. At No. 24, in the court, we see a fine old eighteenth-century hôtel built by Servandoni. The houses No. 18 and No. 20 were built upon the old gardens of la Reine Margot, which stretched down here from her palace, Rue de Seine. From the Place du Palais-Bourbon, due to Louis de Bourbon, prince de Condé, we see one side of the Chambre des Députés, built as the Palais-Bourbon by a daughter of Louis XIV (1722). It was enlarged later by the prince de Condé, confiscated in 1780 and renamed Maison de la Révolution, almost entirely rebuilt under Napoléon. Its Grecian peristyle dates from 1808. In 1816 a prince de Condé was again in possession. The Government bought it back in 1827 and built the present Salle des Séances. In Rue de Bourgogne, on the other side of the place, we find several eighteenth-century hôtels. No. 48 was hôtel Fitz-James. No. 50 has been the archbishop’s palace since 1907. Mgr. Richard died there in 1908.

The Champ-de-Mars, wholly modern as we see it, surrounded by brand new streets and avenues, stretches across ancient historic ground. Not yet so named, the territory was a veritable champ de Mars more than a thousand years ago when, in 888, the warrior bishop Eudes, at the head of his Parisians, faced the Norman invaders there and forced them to retreat. Towards the close of the eighteenth century the great space was enclosed as the exercising-ground of the École Militaire. The Fête Nationale de la Fédération was held there on 14th July, 1790, presided by Talleyrand; a year later, 17th July, 1791, La Fayette-Bailly fired upon the mob that gathered here, clamouring for the deposition of the King. At the corner where the Avenue de la Bourdonnais now passes the guillotine was set up for the execution of Bailly in 1793. On June 8th, 1794, the people from far and near crowded here for the Fête de l’Être Suprême. In 1804 the Champ-de-Mars was called for a time Champ-de-Mai. But it remained, nevertheless, the site of military displays. Napoléon’s eagles and the new decoration, la Légion d’Honneur, were first bestowed here, and when, in 1816, Louis XVIII mounted the throne of France, it was on the Champ-de-Mars that soldiers and civilians received once more the drapeau blanc.

Horse-races took place here. Here, so long ago as 1783, the first primitive airship was sent up. Also, later, a giant balloon. The great exhibition of 1798 and all succeeding great exhibitions, as well as many smaller ones, were held on the Champ-de-Mars. The park we see was laid out in 1908.

CHAPTER XXIX

ANCIENT STREETS OF THE FAUBOURG SAINT-GERMAIN

THE extensive district on the left bank of the Seine, through which was cut in modern times the wide boulevard St-Germain, was in its remotest days the Villa Sancti Germani, with its “prés-aux-clercs” a rural expanse surrounding the abbey and quite distinct from the city of Paris, without its bounds. The inhabitants of that privileged district were exempt from Paris “rates and taxes,” to use our latter-day expression, and enjoyed other legal immunities. They were subject only to the authority of the abbey administration and were actively employed in agricultural and other rustic occupations for the abbey benefit. The territory was a region of thatched-roofed dwellings, barns and granaries. When at length certain grands seigneurs chose the district for the erection of country mansions, these newly built houses were soon forcibly abandoned, many of them destroyed, in the course of the Hundred Years’ War. A century or more later more mansions were built and the bourg St-Germain grew into the aristocratic quarter it finally became after the erection of the Tuileries, Catherine de’ Medeci’s new palace, in the middle of the sixteenth century. The venerable old Rue du Bac was made on the left bank of the Seine in a straight line with the ford (bac) across the river in the year 1550, for the transport of materials needed in the construction of the palace. The rough road along which the carters came with their loads, stone from the southern quarries, etc., grew into a fashionable street in the early years of the century following, when, after due authorization of the abbé of St-Germain-des-Prés, fine new hôtels were built in every direction across the Prè-aux-Clercs, to be within easy distance of the Tuileries and the Court. Thus was created, in the first years of the eighteenth century, the patrician Faubourg St-Germain. The old houses in Rue du Bac which were nearest the river were burnt by the Communards in 1871, when the Tuileries itself was destroyed.

The headquarters of the Mousquetaires Gris was once on the site of the houses Nos. 18-17. Many seventeenth- and eighteenth-century houses still stand. At No. 37 we find an old and interesting court. No. 46, hôtel Bernard, was successively inhabited by men of note, much of its ancient interior decoration has been removed. No. 94 belonged till recently to the Frères Chrétiens. No. 85 was once the royal monastery known as les Récollettes, subsequently in turn a theatre, a dancing saloon, a concert hall. At No. 98 Pichegru is said to have passed his first night in Paris. Here the Chouans held their secret meetings and Cadoudal lay in hiding. We see a fine door, balcony and staircase at No. 97. No. 101 dates from the time of Louis XIV. Nos. 120-118, hôtel de Clermont-Tonnerre; Chateaubriand died here in 1848. No. 128 is the Séminaire des Missions Étrangères, founded 1663 by Bernard de Ste-Thérèse, bishop of Babylone. No. 136 hôtel de Crouseilhes. No. 140 began as a maladrerie, was later the abode of the King’s falconer, and was given in 1813 to the Order of St-Vincent-de-Paul. Mme Legras, St-Vincent-de-Paul’s ardent fellow-worker, was buried in the chapel. The great shops of the Bon Marché stretch where private mansions stood of yore.

Rue de Lille, formerly Rue de Bourbon, has many ancient houses. We see in the wall of No. 14 an old sundial with inscriptions in Latin. At No. 26 we find vestiges of a chapel founded by Anne d’Autriche. No. 67, built in 1706 for President Duret, was annexed later to the hôtel of prince Monaco-Valentinois. No. 79, hôtel de Launion, 1758, was the house of Charlotte Walpole, who became Mrs. Atkins, the devoted friend of the Bourbons, and spent a fortune in her efforts to save the Dauphin. She died here in 1836. No. 64, built in 1786 for the prince de Salm-Kyrburg, was gained in a lottery by a wig-maker’s assistant, in the first days of the First Empire, an adventurer who bought the pretty palace of Bagatelle beyond Paris, was arrested for forgery, then disappeared. Used as a club, then, in 1804, as the palace of the Légion d’Honneur, it was burnt by the Communards in 1871, rebuilt at the cost of the légionnaires in 1878. No. 78, built by Boffrand, was the home of Eugène de Beauharnais; we see there the bedroom of Queen Hortense. German Embassy before the war.

Rue de Verneuil is another seventeenth-century street built across the Pré-aux-Clercs. Nos. 13-15 was first a famous eighteenth-century riding-school, then the Académie Royale Dugier; later, till 1865, Mairie of the arrondissement. The inn at No. 24 was the meeting-place of royalists in the time of the Empire.

Rue de Beaume has several interesting hôtels, their old-time features well preserved. In the seventeenth century Carnot’s ancestors lived between the Nos. 17-25. At No. 10 we see remains of the headquarters of the Mousquetaires Gris, which extended across the meeting-point of the four streets: Beaume, Verneuil, Bac, Lille. No. 2 was l’hôtel Mailly-Nesle.

Rue des Saints-Pères marks the boundary-line between arrondissements VI and VII, an old-world street of historic associations. It began at the close of the thirteenth century as Rue aux Vaches; cows passed there in those days to and from the farmyards of the abbey St-Germain-des-Prés. In the sixteenth century it was known, like Rue de Sèvres into which it runs, as Rue de la Maladrerie, to become Rue des Jacobins Réformés, finally Rue St-Pierre from the chapel built there, a name corrupted to Saints-Pères. No. 2 l’hôtel de Tessé. No. 6 (1652) once the stables of Marie-Thérèse de Savoie. No. 28 l’hôtel de Fleury (1768). The court of No. 30 covers the site of an old Protestant graveyard. A few old houses remain in Rue Perronet opening at No. 32, where once an abbey windmill worked. No. 39 Hôpital de la Charité, an Order founded by Marie de’ Medici in 1602, its principal entrance Rue Jacob. Dislodged from their original quarters in Rue de la Petite-Seine, where Rue Bonaparte now runs, by Queen Margot, who wanted the site for the new palace she built for herself on quitting l’hôtel de Sens, the nuns settled here about the year 1608. At No. 40 we see medallions over the door, one of Charlotte Corday, the other not, as sometimes said, that of Marat but a Moor’s head. In the court we see other medallions and mouldings made chiefly from the sculptures on the tomb of François I at St-Denis. The hôtel de la Force, where dwelt Saint-Simon, once stood close here. That and other ancient hôtels were razed to make way for the boulevard St-Germain. No. 49, the chapel of the “frères de la Charité” on the site of the ancient chapel St-Pierre of which the crypt still remains, has been the medical Academy since 1881. The square adjoining it is an old Protestant burial-ground. Nos. 50-52 are ancient. No. 54 is the French Protestant library, Cuvier and Guizot were among its presidents. No. 56 was built in 1640 for la Maréchale de la Meilleraie. At No. 63 Châteaubriand lived from 1811 to 1814.

CHAPTER XXX

THE MADELEINE AND ITS NEIGHBOURHOOD

ARRONDISSEMENT VIII. (ÉLYSÉE)

THE handsome church which forms so distinct a feature of this quarter of the city was begun to be built in the year 1764 to replace an older church, originally a convent chapel, in the district known as Ville l’Evêque because the bishop of Paris had a country house—a villa—there.

The Revolution found the new church unfinished, and when Napoléon was in power he decided to complete the structure as a temple of military glory to be dedicated to the Grande Armée. Napoléon fell. The building was restored to the ecclesiastical authorities and its construction as a church, dedicated to Ste. Marie-Madeleine, completed during the years 1828-42. Begun on the model of the Pantheon at Rome, the building was finished on the plan of the Maison Carrée at Nismes. It is 108 mètres in length, 43 m. broad. The fine Corinthian columns we see are forty-eight in number. The great bronze doors are the largest church doors known. Their splendid bas-reliefs are the work of Triquetti (1838). Specimens of every kind of marble found in France have been used in the grand interior. In the wonderful painting “l’Histoire de la France Chrétienne,” we see in the centre Pope Pius VII and Napoléon in the act of making the Concordat, surrounded by King Clovis, Charlemagne, St. Louis, Jeanne d’Arc, Henri IV, Sully, Louis XIII, etc. The statues and other decorations are all modern, the work of the most distinguished artists of the nineteenth century. The abbé Deguerry, vicar in 1871, shot by the Communards, is buried there in the chapel Notre-Dame de la Compassion.

The place surrounding the church dates from 1815. At No. 7 lived Amédée Thierry (1820-29), Meilhac, and during fifty years Jules Simon who died there in 1896. We see his statue before the house. Behind the church we see the statue of Lavoisier, put to death at the Revolution. The streets opening out of Place de la Madeleine are modern, cut across ancient convent lands, and the old farm lands of les Mathurins. No. 5 Rue Tronchet is said to have been at one time the home of Chopin. Rue de l’Arcade, of yore “Chemin d’Argenteuil”—Argenteuil Road—got its name from an arcade destroyed in the time of Napoléon III, which stretched across the gardens of the convent of Ville l’Evêque, where the houses 15 and 18 now stand. Several of the houses we see along the street date from the eighteenth century, none are of special interest.

Rue Pasquier brings us to the Square Louis XVI and the chapelle Expiatoire built on the graveyard of the Madeleine. In that graveyard, made in 1659 upon the convent kitchen garden, were buried many of the most noted men and women of the tragic latter years of the eighteenth century. There were laid the numerous victims of the fire on the Place de la Concorde, at that time Place Louis XVI, caused by fireworks at the festivities after the wedding of Louis XVI. The thousand Swiss Guards who died to defend the Tuileries, Louis XVI, Marie-Antoinette, Mme Roland, Charlotte Corday and hundreds more of the guillotinés were buried there. When, in 1794, the churchyard was disaffected and put up for sale, the whole territory was bought by an ardent royalist and under Louis XVIII the chapel we see was built; an altar in the crypt marks the spot where some of the remains of the King and Queen were found.

Rue d’Anjou, opened in 1649, formerly Rue des Morfondus, has known many illustrious inhabitants: Madame Récamier, the comtesse de Boigne, etc. La Fayette died at No. 8 (1834). No. 22 dates from 1763. The Mairie was originally the hôtel de Lorraine. Many of the ancient hôtels have been replaced by modern erections.

In Rue de Surène, in olden days Suresnes Road, we see at No. 23 the handsome hôtel de Lamarck-Arenberg, dating from 1775, and the petit hôtel du Marquis de l’Aigle of about the same date.

Rue de la Ville l’Évêque dates from the seventeenth century, recalling by its name the days when, from the thirteenth century onwards, the bishops of Paris had a rural habitation, a villa and perhaps a farm in this then outlying district. Around the villeta episcopi grew up a little township included within the city bounds in the time of Louis XV. The ancient thirteenth-century church, dedicated like its modern successor to Ste-Marie-Madeleine, stood on the site of No. 11 of the modern boulevard Malesherbes. The Benedictine convent close by, of later foundation, built like the greater number of the most noted Paris convents in the early years of the seventeenth century, was suppressed and razed at the Revolution. Many noted persons of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries had their residences in the Ville l’Evêque. Guizot died there in 1875. No. 16, l’hôtel du Maréchal Suchet, is now an Institut. No. 20 the hôtel of Prince Arenberg. No. 25-27 are ancient.

Rue Boissy d’Anglas, opened in the eighteenth century, bearing for long three different names in the different parts of its course, records in its present name that of a famous conventional (1756-1826). In the well-known provision shop, Corcellet, Avenue de l’Opéra, we may see the portrait of the famous Gourmet, who in pre-Revolution days lived at the fine mansion No. 1, now the Cercle artistique “l’Épatant,” and carried out there his luxurious and ultra-refined taste in the matter of food and the manner of serving it. Horses to whom a recherché cuisine could not be offered, had their oats served to them in silver mangers. Sequestered at the Revolution, it still remained the abode of a gourmet of repute; sold later to the State, it became an Embassy, then a club. No. 12 dates from Louis XV and has been the abode of several families of historic name. Prince de Beauvau lived there in more modern days and baron Hausmann died there. Lulli died at No. 28 (1637). Curious old houses are seen in the Cité Berreyer and Cité du Retiro.

Rue Royale, in its earliest days Chemin des Remparts—Rampart Road—for the third Porte St-Honoré in the city wall was at the point where it meets the Rue du Faubourg, became a street—Rue Royale-des-Tuileries—in the middle of the eighteenth century. In 1792 it became Rue de la Révolution, then, from 1800 to 1814, Rue de la Concorde. Most of the houses we see there date from the eighteenth century, built by the architect Gabriel, who lived at No. 8. Mme de Staël lived for a time at No. 6. This leads us to Place de la Concorde, built by Gabriel; it was opened in 1763 as Place Louis XV, to become a hundred and thirty years later Place de la Révolution, with in its centre a statue of Liberty replacing the overturned statue of the King. Its name was changed several times during the years that followed, till in 1830 the name given by the Convention was restored for good. In olden days it was surrounded by moats and had on one side a pont-tournant; the place was the scene of national fêtes in times past as it is in our own times. It was also not unfrequently the scene of tragedy and death. The guillotine was set up there on January 21, 1793, for the execution of the King. Marie-Antoinette, Charlotte Corday and many other notable victims of the Revolution were beheaded there ... in the end, Robespierre himself. In 1814 the Allies of those days gathered there for the celebration of a grand Te-Deum. The statues we see surrounding the vast place personify the great towns of France—that of Strasbourg the most remarkable. The fine “Chevaux de Marly” at the starting-point of the Champs-Elysées are the work of Coustou, Mercury and la Renommée, at the entrance of the Tuileries gardens, of Coysevox. Handsome buildings (eighteenth century) flank the place on its northern side. The Ministère de la Marine was in pre-Revolution days the garde meuble of the Kings of France. Splendid jewels, including the famous diamond known as le Regent, were stolen thence in 1792. What is now the Automobile Club was for many years the official residence of the papal Nuncio. L’hôtel Crillon, built as a private mansion, was for a time the Spanish Embassy; most of the beautiful woodwork for which it was noted has been sold and taken away.

CHAPTER XXXI

LES CHAMPS-ÉLYSÉES

THIS wonderful avenue stretching through the whole length of the arrondissement reached in olden days only to the rural district of Chaillot, and was known as the Grande Allée-du-Roule, later as Avenue des Tuileries. Colbert, Louis XIV’s great minister, first made it a tree-planted avenue. The gardens bordering it on either side between Place de la Concorde and Avenue d’Antin, were laid out by Le Nôtre, 1670, as Crown land. Cafés, restaurants, toy-stalls, etc., were set up there from the first. The Palais de Glace is on the site of a Panorama which existed till its destruction by fire in 1855. The far-famed Café des Ambassadeurs, set up in the eighteenth century, was rebuilt in 1841. The no less famous cirque de l’Impératrice was razed in 1900.

The Rond-Point des Champs-Élysées was first laid out in 1670, but the houses we see there now are all modern. Avenue d’Antin stretching on either side of it, old only in the part leading from Cours-la-Reine, was planted in 1723 by the duc d’Orléans. Marguerite Gauthier (la Dame aux Camélias) lived at No. 9. At No. 3 Avenue Matignon Heine died in his room on the fifth story (1856). Avenue Montaigne was known in 1731 as Allée des Veuves. It remained an alley—Allée Montaigne—till 1852. The thatched dwelling of Mme Tallien stood at its starting-point, near the Seine. There her divorced and destitute husband was forced to accept a shelter at the hands of his ex-wife, become princesse de Chimay; there the Revolutionist died in 1820. We see only modern houses along the Avenue of to-day. Rue Matignon was opened across the ancient Jardin d’hiver where fine tropical plants erewhile had flourished. No. 12 was the Vénerie Impériale.

Avenue des Champs-Élysées is bordered on both sides by modern mansions. No. 25, hôtel de la Païve, of late years the Traveller’s Club, during the war an ambulance, represents the style of the Second Empire. Avenue Gabriel with its grand mansions was formed in 1818 on the Marais-des-Gourdes—marshy land. The Rue Marbeuf was in the eighteenth century Ruelle des Marais, then Rue des Gourdes. Its present name recalls the Louis XV Folie Marbœuf once there. Few and far between are the ancient vestiges to be found among the modern structures we see on every side around us here. Rue Chaillot, in bygone days the chief street of the village of Chaillot, was taken within the Paris bounds in 1860. It was a favourite street for residence in the nineteenth century. Rue Bassano, entirely modern now, existed in part as Ruelle des Jardins in the early years of the eighteenth century. Rue Galilée was Chemin des Bouchers in 1790, then Rue du Banquet.

So we come to la Place de l’Étoile, the high ground known in long-gone times as “la Montagne du Roule.” Till far into the eighteenth century it was without the city bounds and beyond the Avenue des Champs-Élysées which ended at Rue de Chaillot, a tree-studded, unlevelled, grass-grown octagonal stretch of land. Then it was made round and even, and became a favourite and fashionable promenade, known as l’Étoile de Chaillot, or the Rond-Point de Neuilly. The site had long been marked out for the erection of an important monument when Napoléon decreed the construction there of the Arc de Triomphe. The first stone of the arch was laid by Chalgrin in 1806, the Emperor and his new wife, on their wedding-day passed beneath a temporary Arc de Triomphe made of cloth, as the stone structure was not yet finished. Of the statuary which decorate the arch, the most noted group is the Départ, by Rude. The frieze shows the going forth to battle and the return of Napoléon’s armies, with the names of his generals engraved beneath.[F]

CHAPTER XXXII

FAUBOURG ST-HONORÉ

TURNING down Avenue Wagram, one of the twelve broad avenues, all modern, branching from the Place de l’Étoile, we come to the Faubourg St-Honoré, originally Chaussée du Roule. The village of Le Roule was famed in the thirteenth century for its goose-market. The district became a faubourg in 1722 and in 1787 was taken within the city bounds. It has always been a favourite quarter among men of intellectual activity desiring to live beyond the turbulence of the centre of Paris. Here and there we come upon vestiges of bygone days. No. 222 is an old Dominican convent disaffected in 1906. A foundry once stood at the corner of the Rue Balzac, where public statues of kings and other royalties of old were in turn cast or melted down. The house where Balzac died once stood close there too, up against an ancient chapel—all long swept away. The walled garden remains—bordering the street to which the name of the great novelist has been given—a slab put up where we see, just above the wall, the top of a pillared summer-house, which Balzac is said to have built. The hospital Beaujon dates from 1784 but has no architectural or historical interest. The few ancient houses we see at intervals in this upper part of the faubourg are remains of the village du Roule. Several of more interesting aspect were razed a few years ago. The military hospital was once the site of royal stables. Mme de Genlis died at No. 170.

The church St-Philippe du Roule was built by Chalgrin in 1774 on the site of the seventeenth-century hôtel du Bas-Roule. No. 107 was the habitation of the King’s Pages under Louis XV. On the site of No. 81 comte de Fersan had his stables in the time of Louis XVI. The Home Office (Ministère de l’Intérieur) on Place Beauvau dates from the eighteenth century and has been a private mansion, a municipal hôtel, a hotel in the English sense of the word.

The Palais de l’Élysée, built in 1718, was bought in 1753 by Mme de Pompadour. La Pompadour died at Versailles, but by her express wish her body was taken to Paris and laid in this her Paris home before the funeral. She bequeathed the hôtel to the comte de Province, but Louis XV used it for State purposes. Then, become again a private residence, it was inhabited by the duchesse de Bourbon, mother of the due d’Enghien. She let it later to the tenant who made of it an Élysée, a pleasure-house, laid out a parc anglais, gave sumptuous fêtes champêtres. Sequestered at the Revolution, the mansion was sold subsequently to Murat and Caroline Buonaparte, then became an imperial possession as l’Élysée-Napoléon. Napoléon gave it to Joséphine at her divorce but she preferred Malmaison. There the Emperor signed his second abdication and there, in 1815, the Duke of Wellington and the Emperor of Russia made their abode. The next occupants were the duc and duchesse de Berry. The duchesse left it after her husband’s death in 1820. It became l’Hôtellierie des Princes. In 1850 Napoléon as Prince-President made a brief abode there before the coup d’état. The façade dates from his reign as Napoléon III when, to cut it off from surrounding buildings, he made the Rue de l’Élysée through its gardens. The Garde Nationale took possession of it in 1871. It was saved from destruction under the Commune by its conservateur, who placed counterfeited scellés. No. 41, hôtel Pontalba, built by Visconti on the site of an older hôtel, now owned by one of the Rothschilds, has fine ancient woodwork, once at hôtel St-Bernard, Rue du Bac. No. 39, the British Embassy, was built in 1720 for the duc de Charost; given in 1803 to Pauline Buonaparte, princesse Borghese, given over to the English in 1815. British Embassy since 1825. Nos. 35, 33, 31, 29, 27 are all eighteenth-century hôtels. At No. 30 the Cité de Retiro was in past days the great Cour des Coches, inhabited by the “Fermier des carrosses de la Cour.” Nos. 24, 16 are ancient. No. 14 was the Mairie till 1830.

The streets opening out of the Faubourg date mostly from the eighteenth century and show here and there traces of a past age, but the greater number of the houses standing along their course to-day are of modern construction. Rue d’Aguesseau was cut in 1723 across the property of the Chancellor whose name it records. The Embassy church there is on the site of the ancient hôtel d’Armaille. No. 18 was at one time the Mairie of the 1st arrondissement. Rue Montalivet, where at No. 6 we see the friendly front of the British Consulate, was for some years Rue du Marché-d’Aguesseau. Rue des Saussaies was in the seventeenth century a willow-tree bordered road. Place des Saussaies is modern on the site of demolished eighteenth-century hôtels. In Rue Cambacérés we see ancient hôtels at Nos. 14, 8, 3.

The first numbers in Rue Miromesnil are old and have interesting decorations, Châteaubriand lived at No. 31 in 1804. Rue de Panthièvre was Rue des Marais in the seventeenth century, then Chemin Vert. Its houses were the habitation of many noted persons through the two centuries following. Franklin is said to have lived at No. 26, also Lucien Buonaparte. The barracks dates from 1780, one of those built for the Gardes Françaises, who had previously been billeted in private houses. Fersen lived in Rue Matignon; Gambetta at No. 12, Rue Montaigne (1874-78). The Colisée, which gave its name to the street previously known as Chaussée des Gourdes, was an immense hall used for festive gatherings from 1770 to 1780, when it was demolished. On part of the site it occupied, Rue Penthieu was opened at the close of the eighteenth century and Rue de la Bôëtie into which we now turn. That fair street was known in the different parts of its course by no less than eleven different names before its present one, given in 1879. Several eighteenth-century hôtels still stand here; others on the odd number side were razed in recent years to widen the thoroughfare. No. 111 was inhabited for a time at the end of the eighteenth century by the then duc de Richelieu. When Napoléon was in power, an Italian minister lived there and gave splendid fêtes, at which the Emperor was a frequent guest. In recent days its owner was the duc de Massa, grandson of Napoléon’s famous minister of Justice. Carnot lived for a time at No. 122. Eugène Sue at No. 55. Comtesse de la Valette at No. 44, a hôtel known for its extensive grounds.

Rue de Berri, opened 1778, across the site of the royal nursery gardens, went by several names before receiving that of the second son of Charles X, assassinated in 1820. The Belgian Legation at No. 20 was built by the aunt of Mme de Genlis and was in later times the home of princesse Mathilde who died there in 1904. Rue Washington was opened in 1789; Rue Galilée as chemin des Bouchers, then Rue du Banquet, in 1790. In Rue Daru, of the same date, opened as Rue de la Croix du Roule, we see the Russian church built in 1881, with its beautiful paintings and frescoes and rich Oriental decorations.

CHAPTER XXXIII

PARC MONCEAU

WE have already referred to Avenue Wagram. Modern buildings stretch along the whole course of the other eleven avenues branching from Place de l’Étoile. Avenue Hoche leads us to Parc Monceau, laid out on lands belonging in past days to the Manor of Clichy, sold to the prince d’Orléans in 1778, arranged as a smart jardin anglais for Philippe-Égalité in 1785, the property of the nation in 1794, restored to the Orléans by Louis XVIII, bought by the State in 1852, given to the city authorities in 1870. The Renaissance arcade is a relic of the ancient hôtel de Ville, burnt down in 1871. The oval bassin, called “la Naumachie,” with its Corinthian columns, came from an old church at St-Denis, Notre-Dame de la Rotonde, built as the burial-place of the Valois, razed in 1814. Avenue Friedland was opened in 1719, across the site of a famous eighteenth-century public garden and several demolished hôtels, and lengthened to its present extent some fifty years later. Avenue Marceau was of yore Avenue Joséphine.

Rue de Monceau, opened in 1801, lies along the line of the old road to the vanished village of Monceau or Musseau. Rue du Rocher, along the course of a Roman road, has gone by different names in its different parts. Its upper end, waste ground until well into the nineteenth century, at the close of the eighteenth century was a Revolutionists’ meeting-place, and there in the tragic months of 1794 many guillotinés were buried, among them the two Robespierres. In later years a dancing saloon was set up on the spot. It was a district of windmills. The Moulin de la Marmite, Moulin Boute-à-Feu, Moulin-des-Prés, stood on the high ground above Gare St-Lazare until a century ago. Few vestiges of the past remain. Rue de Laborde was known in 1788 as Rue des Grésillons, i.e. Flour Street (grésillons, the flour in its third stage of grinding). Then it became Chemin des Porcherons, and the district was known as that of la Petite-Pologne, a reference to the habitation there of the duc d’Anjou, who was King of Poland. In the courtyard of No. 4 we find an ancient boundary-stone, once in Rue de l’Arcade, where it marked the bounds of the city under Louis XV.

Rue de la Pépinière, its name and that of the barracks there so well known of late to British soldiers, recording the site of the royal nursery grounds of a past age, was marked out as early as 1555, but opened only in 1782. The barracks, first built in 1763 for the Gardes Françaises, was rebuilt under Napoléon III. All other streets in the neighbourhood are modern.

CHAPTER XXXIV

IN THE VICINITY OF THE OPERA

ARRONDISSEMENT IX. (OPÉRA)

THE Paris Opera-house was built between the years 1861-75 to replace the structure in Rue le Peletier burnt to the ground in 1873. On its ornate Renaissance façade we see, amid other statuary, the noted group “La Danse,” the work of Carpeaux. Of the “Grands Boulevards,” by which the Opera is surrounded, we shall speak later (see p. 297).

Most of the streets in its neighbourhood are modern, stretching across the site of demolished buildings, important in their day, but of which few traces now remain.

Rue des Mathurins lies across the grounds of the vanished convent, Ville l’Évêque. Rue Tronchet runs where was once the Ferme des Mathurins (see p. 224).

Rue Caumartin, opened 1779, records the name of the Prévôt des Marchands of the day. It was a short street then, lengthened later by the old adjoining streets Ste-Croix and Thiroux, the site erewhile of the famed porcelaine factory of la Reine. (Marie-Antoinette). No. 1 dates from 1779 and was noted for its gardens arranged in Oriental style. No. 2, to-day the Paris Sporting Club, dates from the same period. No. 2 bis and most of the other houses have been restored or rebuilt. The butcher Legendre, who set the phrygian cap on the head of Louis XVI, is said to have lived at No. 52. No. 65 was built as a Capucine convent (1781-83). Sequestered at the Revolution, it became a hospital, then a lycée, its name changed and rechanged: Lycée Buonaparte, Collège Bourbon, Lycée Fontanes, finally Lycée Condorcet, while the convent chapel, rebuilt, became the church St-Louis d’Antin. Rue Vignon was, till 1881, Rue de la Ferme des Mathurins, as an inscription on the walls of No. 1 reminds us. Rue de Provence, named after the brother of Louis XVI, was opened in 1771, built over a drain which went from Place de la République to the Seine near Pont de l’Alma. No. 22 is an ancient house restored. Berlioz lived at No. 41. Meissonier at No. 43. Nos. 45 to 65 are on the site of the mansion and grounds of the duc d’Orléans which extended to Rue Taitbout. We see a fine old hôtel at No. 59. Cité d’Antin, opening at No. 61, was built in 1825, on the site of the ancient hôtel Montesson. Liszt, the pianist, lived at No. 63. The Café du Trèfle claims existence since the year 1555. The busy, bustling Rue de la Chaussée d’Antin was an important roadway in the twelfth century, as Chemin des Porcherons. The houses we see there are mostly of eighteenth-century date, others occupy the site of ancient demolished buildings. Many notable persons lived here. No. 1, where we see the Vaudeville theatre (there since 1867), was of old the site of two historic mansions. No. 2, now a fashionable restaurant, dates from 1792, built as Dépôt des Gardes Françaises. Rossini lived there for one year—1857-58. Where Rue Meyerbeer was opened in 1860 stood, in other days, the hôtel of Mme d’Épinay, whose walls had sheltered Grimm, and for a time Mozart. A neighbouring house was the home of Necker, where his daughter, Mme de Staël, grew up and which became later the possession of Mme Récamier. The graveyard of St-Roch stretched, till the end of the eighteenth century, across the site of Nos. 20-22. No. 42 belonged to Mme Talma. There Mirabeau died in 1791; his widow in 1800. Joséphine de Beauharnais, not yet Empress, dwelt at No. 62. Gambetta at No. 55. No. 68, hôtel Montfermeil, was rebuilt by Fesch, Napoléon’s uncle. Rue St-Lazare was, before 1770, Rue des Porcherons, from the name of an important estate of the district over which the abbesses of Montmartre had certain rights of jurisdiction. Passage de Tivoli, at No. 96, recalls the first Tivoli with its jardins anglais stretching far at this corner. Its owner’s head fell, severed by the guillotine, and his folie became national property. Fêtes were given there by the Revolutionist authorities till its restoration, in 1810, to heirs of the man who had built it. Avenue du Coq records the existence in fourteenth-century days of a Château du Coq, known also as Château des Porcherons, the manor-house of the Porcherons’ estate. The Square de la Trinité is on the site of a famous restaurant of past days, the well-known “Magny,” which as a dancing-saloon—“La Grande Pinte”—was on the site till 1851. The church is modern (1867). No. 56 is part of the hôtel Bougainville where the great tragedienne, Mlle Mars, lived. At No. 23, dating from the First Empire, we find a fine old staircase and in the court a pump marked with the imperial eagle. Rue de Chateaudun is modern. The brasserie at the corner of Rue Maubeuge stands on the site of the ancient cemetery des Porcherons. Rue de la Victoire, in the seventeenth century Ruellette-au-Marais-des-Porcherons, was renamed in 1792 Rue Chantereine, referring to the very numerous frogs (rana = frog) which filled the air of that then marshy district with their croaking. Buonaparte lived there at one time, hence the name given in 1798, taken away in 1816, restored by Thiers in 1833. By a curious coincidence, an Order of Nuns, “de la Victoire,” so called to memorize a very much earlier victory—Bouvines 1214—owned property here. On the site of No. 60, now a modern house let out in flats, stood in olden days the chief entrance to l’hôtel de la Victoire, a remarkably handsome structure built in 1770, sold and razed in 1857—alas! At the end of the court at No. 58 we see the ancient hôtel d’Argenson, its salon kept undisturbed from the days when great politicians of the past met and made decisive resolutions there. The Bains Chantereine at No. 46 has been théâtre Olymphique, théâtre des Victoires Nationales, théâtre des Troubadours, and was for a few days in 1804 l’Opéra Comique; No. 45, with its busts and bas-reliefs, dates from 1840. Rue Taitbout, begun in 1773, lengthened by the union of adjoining streets, records the name of an eighteenth-century municipal functionary. Isabey, Ambroise Thomas and Manuel Gracia lived in this old street, and at No. 1, now a smart café, two noted Englishmen, the Marquis of Hertford and Lord Seymour, lived at different periods. No. 2 was once the famous restaurant Tortoni. No. 30, as a private hôtel, sheltered Talleyrand and Mme Grand. We see interesting vestiges at No. 44. The Square d’Orléans is the ancient Cité des Trois Frères, in past days a nest of artists and men of letters: Dumas, George Sand, Lablache, etc.

CHAPTER XXXV

ON THE WAY TO MONTMARTRE

RUE DE CLICHY was once upon a time the Roman road between Paris and Rouen, taking in its way the village Cligiacum. For long in later days it was known as Rue du Coq, when the old château stood near its line. It was in a house of Rue de Clichy, inhabited by the Englishman Crawford, that Marie-Antoinette and her children had a meal on the way to Varennes. The three successive “Tivoli” were partly on the site of No. 27, in this old street. There too was the “Club de Clichy,” whose members opposed the government of the Directoire. The whole district leading up to the heights of Montmartre was then, as now, a quarter of popular places of amusement, the habitation of artistes of varying degree, but we find here few old-time vestiges. Where Rue Nouvelle was opened in 1879 the prison de Clichy, a debtor’s prison, had previously stood. No. 81 is the four-footed animals’ hospital founded in 1811. Zola died at No. 21 Rue de Bruxelles. Heine lived from 1848-57 at No. 50 Rue Amsterdam. Rue Blanche was Rue de la Croix-Blanche in the seventeenth century. Berlioz lived at No. 43. Roman remains were found beneath Nos. 16-18. Rue Pigalle has been known by six or seven different names, at one time that of Rue du Champ-de-Repos, on account of the proximity of the cemetery St-Roch. No. 12 belonged to Scribe, who died there (1861). No. 67 is an ancient station for post-horses. Place Pigalle was in past days Place de la Barrière de Montmartre. The fountain is on the site of the ancient custom-house. Puvis de Chavannes and Henner had their studios at No. 11, now a restaurant. Rue de la Rochechouart made across abbey lands, the lower part dating from 1672, records the name of an abbess of Montmartre. Gounod lived at No. 17 in 1867. Halévy in 1841. The Musée Gustave Moreau at No. 14 was the great artist’s own hôtel, bequeathed with its valuable collection to the State at his death in 1898. Marshal Ney lived at No. 12. In Rue de la Tour des Dames a windmill tower, the property of the nuns of Montmartre, stood undisturbed from the fifteenth century to the early part of the nineteenth. The modern mansion at No. 3 (1822) is on land belonging in olden days to the Grimaldi. Talma died in 1826 at No. 9. Rue la Bruyère has always been inhabited by distinguished artists and literary men. Berlioz lived for a time at No. 45. Rue Henner, named after the artist who died at No. 5 Rue la Bruyère, is the old Rue Léonie. We see an ancient and interesting house at No. 13. No. 12 hôtel des Auteurs et Compositeurs Dramatiques, a society founded in 1791 by Beaumarchais.

Rue de Douai reminds us through its whole length of noted literary men and artists of the nineteenth century. Halévy and also notable artists have lived at No. 69. Ivan Tourgueneff at No. 50. Francisque Sarcey at No. 59. Jules Moriac died at No. 32 (1882). Gustave Doré and also Halévy lived for a time at No. 22. Claretie at No. 10. Edmond About owned No. 6.

The old Rue Victor-Massé was for long Rue de Laval in memory of the last abbess of Montmartre. At No. 9, the abode of an antiquarian, we see remarkably good modern statuary on the Renaissance frontage. No. 12 till late years was l’hôtel de Chat Noir, the first of the artistic montmartrois cabarets due to M. Salis (1881). At No. 26 we turn into Avenue Frochot, where Alexandre Dumas, père, lived, where at No. 1 the musical composer Victor Massé died (1884), and of which almost every house is, or once was, the abode of artists. Passing down Rue Henri-Monnier, formerly Rue Breda, which with Place Breda was, during the first half of the nineteenth century, a quarter forbidden to respectable women, we come to Rue Notre-Dame de Lorette. It dates from the same period as the church built there (1823-37), and wherein we see excellent nineteenth-century frescoes and paintings. This street, like most of those around it, has been inhabited by men of distinction in art or letters: Isabey, Daubigny, etc. Mignet lived there in 1849. Rue St-Georges dates from the early years of the eighteenth century. Place St-Georges was opened a century later on land belonging to the Dosne family. Mme Dosne and her son-in-law lived at No. 27. The house was burnt down in 1871, rebuilt by the State, given to l’Institut by Mlle Dosne in 1905, and organized as a public library of contemporary history. Nos. 15-13, now the Illustration office, date from 1788. Auber died at No. 22 (1871). The hôtel at No. 2 was owned by Barras and inhabited at one time by Mme Tallien.

The three busy streets, Rue Laffitte, Rue le Peletier, Rue Drouot, start from boulevard des Italiens, cross streets we have already looked into, and are connected with others of scant historic interest.

Rue Laffitte, so named in 1830 in memory of the great financier who laid the foundation of his wealthy future when an impecunious lad, by stooping, under the eye of the commercial magnate waiting to interview him, to pick up a pin that lay in his path. Laffitte died Regent of the Banque de France. So popular was he that when after 1830 he found himself forced to sell his handsome mansion No. 19—l’hôtel de la Borde—a national subscription was got up enabling him to buy it back. Offenbach lived at No. 11. At No. 12 we find an interesting old court. The great art lover and collector, the Marquis of Hertford, lived at No. 2, the old hôtel d’Aubeterre. No. 1, once known as la Maison Dorée, now a post office, was the old hôtel Stainville inhabited by the Communist Cerutti who, in his time, gave his name to the street. Mme Tallien also lived there. For some years before 1909 it was the much frequented Taverne Laffitte.

In Rue Le Peletier, the Opera-house burnt down in 1783, was from the early years of the nineteenth century on the site of two old mansions: l’hôtel de Choiseul and l’hôtel de Grammont. On the site of No. 2, Orsini tried to assassinate Napoléon III. At No. 22 we see a Protestant church built in the time of Napoléon I.

Rue Drouot, the Salle des Ventes, the great Paris “Auction-rooms” at No. 9, built in 1851, is on the site of the ancient hôtel Pinon de Quincy, subsequently a Mairie. The present Mairie of the arrondissement at No. 6 dates from 1750. In the Revolutionary year 1792 it was the War Office, then the Salon des Étrangers where masked balls were given: les bals des Victimes. No. 2 the Gaulois office, almost wholly rebuilt at the end of the eighteenth century and again in 1811, was originally a fine mansion built in 1717, the home of Le Tellier, later of the duc de Talleyrand, and later still the first Paris Jockey Club (1836-57). The famous dancer Taglioni also lived here at one time.

Rue Grange-Batelière was a farm—la grange bataillée—with fortified towers, owned in the twelfth century by the nuns of Ste-Opportune. At No. 10 we see the handsome hôtel with fine staircase and statues, built in 1785 for a gallant captain of the Gardes Françaises. There in the days of Napoléon III was the Cercle Romantique, where Victor Hugo, A. de Musset and other literary celebrities were wont to meet.

CHAPTER XXXVI

ON THE SLOPES OF THE BUTTE

THE Rue du Faubourg Montmartre is one of the most ancient of Paris roadways, for it led, from the earliest days of French history, to the hill-top where St-Denis and his two companions had been put to death. Only once has the ancient name been changed—at the Revolution, when it was for a time Faubourg Marat. We see here a few old-time houses. The bathing establishment at No. 4 was a private hôtel in the days of Louis XV. Scribe lived at No. 7. The ancient cemetery chapelle, St-Jean-Porte-Latine, stood from 1780-1836 on the site of No. 60.

Rue des Martyrs, named in memory of the Christian missionaries who passed there to their death, so called in its whole length only since 1868, has ever been the habitation of artists. We see few interesting vestiges. From 1872 it has been a market street. Costermongers’ carts line it from end to end several days a week. The restaurant de la Biche at No. 37 claims to date from 1662. The once-famous restaurant du Faisan Doré was at No. 7. The short streets opening out of this long one date for the most part from the early years of the nineteenth century and form, with the longer ones of the district, the Paris artists’ quarter.

Rue de la Tour d’Auvergne records the name of an abbess of Montmartre. Victor Hugo lived at No. 41 at the time of the coup d’état, fled thence to exile in England. The school at No. 31 is on the site of gardens once hired for the children of the duc d’Orléans, the pupils of Mme de Genlis, to play in, then owned by Alphonse Karr. We see at No. 14 a charming statue “Le joueur de flute.”

Rue Rochechouart records the name of another abbess. At No. 7, now a printing house, abbé Loyson gave his lectures. Rue Cadet, formerly Rue de la Voirie, records the name of a family of gardeners, owners of the Clos Cadet, from the time of Charles IX. Nos. 9, 16, 24 are eighteenth-century structures. Rue Richer was known in the earlier years of the eighteenth century as Rue de l’Égout. Augustin Thierry lived here for two years (1831-33). No. 18 was the office of the modern revolutionary paper La Lanterne. Marshal Ney lived at the hôtel numbered 13. The Folies Bergères at No. 32 was built in 1865 on the site of the hôtel of comte Talleyrand-Périgord. In Rue Saulnier, recording the name of another famous family of gardeners, we see at No. 21 the house once inhabited by Rouget de Lisle, composer of the “Marseillaise.” Rue Bergère was in seventeenth-century days an impasse. Casimir Delavigne lived at No. 5. Scribe in his youth at No. 7, in later life at a hôtel on the site of No. 20, which was in eighteenth-century days the home of M. d’Étiolles, the husband of La Pompadour. The Comptoir d’Escompte at No. 14 was built in 1848, on the site of several old hôtels, notably hôtel St-Georges, the home of the marquis de Mirabeau, father of the orator.

Rue du Faubourg Poissonière, its odd numbers in the 9th its even ones in the 10th arrondissement, shows us many interesting old houses and we find quaint old streets leading out of it. It dates as a thoroughfare from the middle of the seventeenth century, named then Chaussée de la Nouvelle France. Later it was Rue Ste-Anne, from an ancient chapel in the vicinity, yielding finally in the matter of name to the all-important fish-market to which it led—the poissonnerie des Halles. In the court at No. 2 we find a Pavillon Louis XVI. The crimson walls of the Matin office was in past days the private hôtel where colonel de la Bedoyère was arrested (1815). We see interesting old houses at Nos. 9-13. No. 15, in old days hôtel des Menus Plaisirs du Roi, was with two adjoining houses taken at the end of the eighteenth century for the Conservatoire de Musique, an institution founded (1784) by the marquis de Breteuil, as the École Royale de Chant et de Déclamation, with the special aim of training artistes for the court theatre. Closed at the Revolution, it was reopened in calmer days and, under the direction of Cherubini, became world-famed. Ambroise Thomas died there in 1895. In 1911 the Conservatoire was moved away to modern quarters in Rue de Madrid and the old building razed.

The balcony on the garden side at No. 19, an eighteenth-century house with many interesting vestiges, is formed of a fifteenth-century gravestone. Cherubini lived at No. 25. The church St-Eugène which we see in Rue Cecile, its interior entirely of cast iron, was so named by Napoléon III’s express wish as a souvenir of his wedding. The fine hôtel at No. 30 was the home of Marshal Ney. Nos. 32, 42, 42 bis, 52 and 56 where Corot died in 1875, the little vaulted Rue Ambroise-Thomas, opening at No. 57, the fine house at No. 58, and Nos. 65 and 80, all show us characteristic old-time features. At No. 82 we see an infantry barracks, once known as la Nouvelle France, a Caserne des Gardes Françaises. Its canteen is said to be the old bedroom of “sergeant Bernadotte,” destined to become King of Sweden. Here Hoche, too, was sergeant. The bathing establishment of Rue de Montholon, opening out of the faubourg at No. 89, was the home of Méhul, author of le Chant du Départ; he died here in 1817. The street records the family name of the General who went with Napoléon to St. Helena. Another abbess of Montmartre is memorized by Rue Bellefond, a seventeenth-century street opening at No. 107. The first Paris gasworks was set up on the site of No. 129. At No. 138 we see a wooden house, in Gothic style, beautifully made, owned and lived in by a carpenter who plies his trade there. Avenue Trudaine is modern (1821), named in memory of a Prévôt des Marchands of the seventeenth and early years of the eighteenth century. The Collège Rollin, at No. 12, is on the site of the ancient Montmartre slaughterhouses. The painter Alfred Stevens died at No. 17 in 1906.

CHAPTER XXXVII

THREE ANCIENT FAUBOURGS

ARRONDISSEMENT X. (ENTREPÔT)

THE chief thoroughfares of historic interest in this arrondissement are the two ancient streets which stretch through its whole length: Rue du Faubourg St-Denis and Rue du Faubourg St-Martin, and the odd-number side of Rue du Faubourg du Temple.

Rue du Faubourg St-Denis, the ancient road to the abbey St-Denis, known in earlier days in part as Faubourg St-Lazare, then as Faubourg-de-Gloire, has still many characteristic old-time buildings. The Passage du Bois-de-Boulogne was the starting-place for the St-Denis coaches. At No. 14 we find an interesting old court; over Nos. 21-44 and at 33 of the little Rue d’Enghein old signs; No. 48 was the Fiacre office in the time of the Directoire, then the famous commercial firm Laffitte and Caillard. Where we see the Cour des Petites-Écuries, the courtesan Ninon de Lenclos had a country house. Félix Faure, Président of the French Republic from 1895 to 1899, was born at No. 65 in 1841. The old house No. 71 formed part of the convent des Filles Dieu. The houses Nos. 99 to 105 were dependencies of St-Lazare, now the Paris Prison for Women, which we come to at No. 107, originally a leper-house, founded in the thirteenth century by the hospitaliers de St-Lazare. It was an extensive foundation, possessing the right of administering justice and had its own prison and gallows. The Lazarists united with the priests of the Mission organized by St-Vincent-de-Paul, and in their day the area covered by the cow-houses, the stables, the various buildings sheltering or storing whatever was needed for the missioners, stretched from the Faubourg St-Denis to the Rues de Paradis, de Dunkerque and du Faubourg Poissonnière. At one time, when leprosy had ceased to be rife in Paris, the hospital was used as a prison for erring sons of good family. In 1793 it became one of the numerous revolutionary prisons; André Chenier, Marie Louise de Montmorency-Laval, the last abbess of Montmartre, were among the suspects shut up there; and the Rue du Faubourg St-Denis was renamed Rue Franciade. St-Lazare was specially obnoxious to Revolutionists, for there the Kings of France had been wont to make a brief stay on each State entry into the city, and there, on their last journey out of it, they had halted in their coffin, on the way to St-Denis. The remains of an ancient crypt were discovered in 1898 below the pavement.

Rue de l’Échiquier was opened in 1772, cut through convent lands. Stretching behind No. 43, till far into the nineteenth century, was the graveyard of the parish Notre-Dame-de-Bonne-Nouvelle. No. 48 was the well-known dancing-hall, Pavillon de l’Échiquier, before and under the Directoire. Rue du Paradis, in the seventeenth century Rue St-Lazare, is noted for its pottery shops. At No. 58 Corot, the great landscape painter who lived hard by, had his studio. The capitulation of Paris in 1814 was signed at No. 51, the abode of the duc de Raguse. Leading out of Rue de Chabrol at No. 7 we find the old-world Passage de la Ferme-St-Lazare and a courtyard, relics of the Lazarists farm. Rue d’Hauteville, so called from the title of a Prévôt des Marchands, comte d’Hauteville, was known in earlier times as Rue la Michodière, his family name. In the court at No. 58 we come upon a hôtel which was the abode of Bourrienne, Napoléon’s secretary; its rooms are an interesting example of the style of the period. The pillared pavilion at No. 6 bis, Passage Violet, dates only from 1840.

Rue de Strasbourg, where the courtyard of the Gare de l’Est now stretches, was the site in olden days of one of the great Paris fairs, the Foire St-Laurent, held annually, lasting two months, a privilege of the Lazarist monks. It was at this fair that the first café-concerts were opened. The Comédie-Italienne, too, first played there. Rue de la Fidélité, on the eastern side of the Faubourg St-Denis, records the name given to the church St-Laurent in Revolution days; it lies across the site of the couvent des Filles-de-la-Charité founded by St-Vincent-de-Paul and Louise de Marillac, of which we find some traces at No. 9.

The northern end of Rue du Faubourg St-Martin was long known as Rue du Faubourg St-Laurent; zealously stamping out all names recording saints, the Revolutionists called this long thoroughfare Faubourg du Nord. We find ancient houses, vestiges of past ages, at every step, and the modern structures seen at intervals are on sites of historic interest. The baker’s shop at No. 44, “A l’Industrie,” claims to have existed from the year 1679. No. 59 is the site of the first Old Catholic church, founded in 1831 by abbé Chatel. The Mairie at No. 76 covers the site of an ancient barracks, and of a bridge which once spanned the brook Ménilmontant. An ancient arch was found beneath the soil in 1896. Rue des Marais, which opens at No. 86, dates from the seventeenth century. Here till 1860 stood the dwelling of the famous public headsman Sanson and of his descendants, painted red! At No. 119 we see the chevet of the church St-Laurent, the only ancient part of the church as we know it. In the little Rue Sibour, opening at No. 121, recording the name of the archbishop of Paris who died in 1857, we find an ancient house, now a bathing establishment. No. 160 covers land once the graveyard of les Récollets. The short Rue Chaudron records the name of a fountain once there. The bulky fountains higher up are modern (1849), built by public subscription.

Rue du Château d’Eau was formed of two old streets: Rue Neuve St-Nicolas-St-Martin and Rue Neuve St-Jean, joined in 1851 and named after a fountain formerly in the centre of the what is now Place de la République. At No. 39 we see the house said to be the smallest in the city—its breadth one mètre. In the walls of the tobacconist’s shop at No. 55, “la Carotte Percée,” we see holes made by the bullets of the Communards in 1871. At No. 6 of the modern Rue Pierre-Bullet, now a gimp factory, we find a house of remarkable interest, beautifully decorated by its builder and owner, the artist Gonthière, who had invented the process of dead-gilding. Ruin fell on the unhappy artist. His house was seized in 1781 and he died in great poverty in 1813.

Crossing the whole northern length of the arrondissement is the busy commercial Rue Lafayette, its one point of interest for us the church St-Vincent-de-Paul, built in the form of a Roman basilica between the years 1824-44, on the site of a Lazariste structure known as the Belvédère. Within we see fine statuary; and glorious frescoes, the work of Flandrin, cover the walls on every side. None of the streets in the vicinity of the church show points of historic interest.

Rue Louis-Blanc, existing in its upper part in the eighteenth century under another name, prolonged in the nineteenth, has one tragically historic spot, that where it meets Rue Grange-aux-Belles. On that spot from the year 1230, or thereabouts, to 1761, on land owned by comte Fulcon or Faulcon, stood the famous gibet de Montfaucon. It was of prodigious size, a great square frame with pillars and iron-chains, sixteen pendus could hang there at one time. The most noted criminals, real or supposed, many bearing the noblest names of France, were hung there, left to swing for days in public view—the noblesse from the Court and the peuple from the sordid streets around crowding together to see the sight. The ghastly remains fell into a pit beneath the gibet and so found burial. Later a more orderly place of interment was arranged on that hill-top. The church of St-Georges now stands on the site.

Rue de la Grange-aux-Belles, so well known nowadays as the seat at No. 33 of the C.G.T.—the Conféderation du Travail, where all Labour questions are discussed, and where in these days of great strikes, the Paris Opera on strike gave gala performances, was originally Rue de la Grange-aux-Pelles, a pelle or pellée being a standard measure of wood. The finance minister Clavière, Roland’s associate, lived here and the authorities borrowed from him the green wooden cart which bore Louis XVI to the scaffold. The painter Abel de Payol lived at No. 13 (1822). A Protestant cemetery once stretched across the land in the centre of the street down to Rue des Écluses St-Martin. There, in 1905, were found the remains of the famous corsaire Paul Jones, transported in solemn state to America shortly afterwards. Turning into Rue Bichat we come to the Hôpital St-Louis, founded by Henri IV. The King had been one of many sufferers from an epidemic which had raged in Paris in the year 1606. On his recovery the bon Roi commanded the building of a hospital to be called by the name of the saint-king, Louis IX, who had died of the plague some three hundred years before. The quaint old edifice with red-tiled roofs, old-world windows, fine archways surrounding a court bright with flowers and shaded by venerable trees, carries us back in mind to the age of the bon Roi to whom the hospital was due. No. 21 was the hospital farm. In Rue Alibert, erewhile an impasse, we see one or two ancient houses, at the corner a pavilion of the time of Henri IV, the property of the hospital. Rue St-Maur runs on into the 11th arrondissement, a street formed in the nineteenth century by three seventeenth-century roads, one of which was Rue Maur or des Morts. We notice old houses and ancient vestiges here and there.

Rue du Faubourg du Temple marks the boundary between arrondissement X and XI, an ancient thoroughfare climbing to the heights of Belleville with many old houses and courts, mostly squalid, and some curious old signs. On the site of No. 18 Astley’s circus was set up in 1780.

The Rue de la Fontaine au Roi (seventeenth century), in 1792 Rue Fontaine-Nationale, shows us at No. 13 a house with porcelaine decorations set up here in 1773. Beneath the pavement of Rue Pierre-Levée a druidical stone was unearthed in 1782. Rue de Malte refers by its name to the Knights Templar of Malta, across whose land it was cut. We see an ancient cabaret at No. 57. Rue Darboy records the name of the archbishop of Paris, shot by the Communards in 1871; Rue Deguerry that of the vicar of the Madeleine who shared his fate. The church of St-Joseph is quite modern, 1860, despite its blackened walls. Avenue Parmentier running up into the 10th arrondissement is entirely modern, recording the name of the man who made the potato known to France.

Rue des Trois-Bornes shows us several old-time houses and at No. 39 a characteristic old court. We find some characteristic vestiges also in Rue d’Angoulême. In Rue St-Ambroise we see the handsome modern church built on the site of the ancient church des Annociades. The monastery of the Annociades was sold in lots, and became in part by turns a barracks, a military hospital, a hospital for incurables, and was razed to the ground in 1864. At Musée Carnavalet we may see bas-reliefs taken from the fountain once on the space before the church. Rue Popincourt, which gives its name to the arrondissement, records the existence in past days of a sire Jean de Popincourt whose manor-house was here, and a sixteenth-century village, which became later part of Faubourg St-Antoine. Rue du Chemin-Vert dates from 1650, but has few interesting features. Parmentier died at No. 68 in 1813.

CHAPTER XXXVIII

IN THE PARIS “EAST END”

WE are now in the vicinity of the largest and most important of the Paris cemeteries—Père Lachaise. But it lies in the 20th arrondissement. The streets of this 10th arrondissement leading east approach its boundary walls—its gates. Rue de la Roquette comes to it from the vicinity of the Bastille. La Roquette was a country house built in the sixteenth century, a favourite resort of the princes of the Valois line. Then, towards the end of the seventeenth century, the house was given over to the nuns Hospitalières of Place-Royale. The convent, suppressed at the Revolution, became State property and in 1837 was used as the prison for criminals condemned to death. The guillotine was set up on the five stones we see at the entrance to Rue Croix-Faubin. The prisoners called the spot l’Abbaye des Cinq Pierres. It was there that Monseigneur Darboy and abbé Deguerry were put to death in 1871. On the day following fifty-two prisoners, chiefly monks and Paris Guards, were led from that prison to the heights of Belleville and shot in Rue Haxo. Read à ce propos Coppée’s striking drama Le Pater. La Roquette is now a prison for youthful offenders, a sort of House of Correction.

Lower down the street we find here and there an ancient house or an old sign. The fountain at No. 70 is modern (1846). The curious old Cour du Cantal at No. 22 is inhabited mostly by Auvergnats. Rue de Charonne, another street stretching through the whole length of the arrondissement, in olden days the Charonne road, starts from the Rue du Faubourg St-Antoine, where at No. 1 we see a fountain dating from 1710. Along its whole length we find vestiges of bygone times. It is a district of ironmongers and workers in iron and workman’s tools. A district, too, of popular dancing saloons. At No. 51 we see l’hôtel de Mortagne, built in 1711, where Vaucanson first exhibited his collection of mechanical instruments. Bequeathed to the State, that collection was the nucleus of the Conservatoire des Arts et Métiers: Arts and Crafts Institution (see p. 64). Here the great mechanic died in 1782. No. 97, once a Benedictine convent, was subsequently a private mansion, then a factory, then in part a Protestant chapel. The École Maternelle at No. 99 was in past days a priory of “Bon Secours” (seventeenth century). No. 98 is on the site of a convent razed in 1906. There are remains of another convent at Nos. 100, 102. No. 161 was the famous “Maison de Santé,” owned by Robespierre’s friend Dr. Belhomme, to which he added the adjoining hôtel of the marquis de Chabanais. There, during the Terror, he received prisoners as “paying guests.” His prices were enormous and on a rising scale ... the guests who could not pay at the required rate were turned adrift on the road to the guillotine. These walls sheltered the duchesse d’Orléans, the mother of Louis-Philippe, protected by her faithful friend known as comte de Folmon, in reality the deputé Rouzet, and many other notable persons of those troubled years. On the left side of the door we see the figures 1726, relic of an ancient system of numbering. The Flemish church de la Sainte Famille at 181 is modern (1862).

Crossing Rue de Charonne in its earlier course, we come upon the sixteenth-century Rue Basfroi, a corruption of beffroi, referring to the belfry of the ancient church Ste-Marguerite in Rue St-Bernard. Ste-Marguerite, founded in 1624 as a convent chapel, rebuilt almost entirely in 1712, enlarged later, is interesting as the burial-place of the Dauphin, or his substitute, in 1745, and as possessing a much-prized relic, the body of St. Ovide, in whose honour the great annual fair was held on Place Vendôme. A tiny cross up against the church wall marks the grave where the son of Louis XVI was supposed to have been laid, but where on exhumation some years ago the bones of an older boy were found. We see some other ancient tombs up against the walls of what remains of that old churchyard, and on the wall of the apse of the church two very remarkable bas-reliefs, the work of an old-time abbé, M. Goy, a clever sculptor, to whom are due also many of the statues in the park at Versailles. Within the church we see several striking statues and a remarkable “Chapelle des Morts,” its walls entirely frescoed in grisaille but in great need of restoration. From the end of Rue Chancy, where at No. 22 we see an old carved wood balcony, we get an interesting view of this historic old church.

Rue de Montreuil, leading to the village of the name, shows us many old houses, one at No. 52 with statuettes and in the courtyard an ancient well, and at No. 31, remains of the Folie Titon, within its walls a fine staircase and ceiling, the latter damaged of late owing to a fire.

CHAPTER XXXIX

ON TRAGIC GROUND

RUE DU FAUBOURG ST-ANTOINE forms the boundary between the arrondissements XI and XII. From end to end it shows us historic vestiges. It has played from earliest times an all-important part in French history, leading, when without the city walls, to Paris and the Bastille from the fortress of Vincennes and lands beyond, while from the time of its incorporation with Paris, popular political demonstrations unfailingly had their mise en scène in the Rue du Faubourg St-Antoine. In the seventeenth century it was a country road in its upper part, the Chaussée St-Antoine, and led to the fine Abbaye St-Antoine-des-Champs; the lower part was the “Chemin de Vincennes.” Along this road, between Picpus and the Bastille, the Frondeurs played their war-games. Turenne’s army fired from the heights of Charonne, while the Queen-Mother, her son, Louis XIII, and Mazarin watched from Père-la-Chaise. At No. 8 lived the regicide Pépin, Fieschis’ accomplice. The sign, the “Pascal Lamb,” at No. 18 dates from the eighteenth century. We see ancient signs all along the street. The Square Trousseau at No. 118 is on the site of the first “Hospice des Enfants Trouvés,” built in 1674 on abbey land. In 1792 it became the “Hôpital des Enfants de la Patrie.” The head of princesse de Lamballe was buried in the chapel graveyard there. What is supposed to be her skull was dug up here in 1904. In 1839 the hospital was made an annexe of the hôtel-Dieu, in 1880 it was Hôpital Trousseau, then in the first years of this twentieth century razed to the ground. At No. 184 the hospital St-Antoine retains some vestiges of the royal abbey that stood there in long-gone days. Founded in 1198, it was like all the big abbeys of the age a small town in itself, surrounded by high fortified walls. At the Revolution it was sequestrated, the church demolished. Till the early years of the nineteenth century, one of the most popular of Paris fairs was held on the site of the old abbey, la Foire aux pains d’épices, which had its origin in an Easter week market held within the abbey precincts. The house No. 186 is on the site of the little chapel St-Pierre, razed in 1797, where of old kings of France lay in state after their death. Two daughters of Charles V were buried there. The fountain and butcher’s shop opposite the hospital date from the time of Louis XV, built by the nuns of the abbey and called la Petite Halle. The nuns alone had the right to sell meat to the population of the district in those old days. Almost every house and courtyard and passage along the whole course of this ancient thoroughfare dates, as we see, from days long past. In the courts at Nos. 245 and 253 we find old wells.

So we reach Place de la Nation, of yore Place du Trône, styled in Revolution days Place du Trône Renversé, and the guillotine set up there “en permanence”: there 1340 persons fell beneath its knife, 54 in one tragic day. The two pavilions on the eastern side of the place were the custom-houses of pre-Revolution days. The monument in the centre is modern (1899). Of the streets and avenues leading from the place, that of supreme interest is the old Rue Picpus, a curious name explained by some etymologists as a corruption of Pique-Pusse, and referring to a sixteenth-century monk of the neighbourhood who succeeded in curing a number of people of an epidemic which studded their arms with spots like flea-bites and who was called henceforth “le Père Pique-Pusse.” In previous days the upper part of the road—it was a road then, not yet a street—had been known as Chemin de la Croix-Rouge. Nos. 4 and 6 are the remains of an eighteenth-century pavilion, a maison de santé—house of detention—where in 1786 St. Just was shut up for petty thefts committed in his own family. No. 10, a present-day maison de santé, is on the site of a hunting-lodge of Henri IV. At No. 35 we see the Oratoire de Picpus, where is the statuette of Notre-Dame, de la Paix, once on the door of the Capucine convent, Rue St-Honoré; and here, behind the convent garden, we find the cimetière Picpus and the railed pit where the bodies of the 1340 persons beheaded on the Place du Trône Renversé were cast in 1793, André Chenier among the number. Their burial-place was unknown until some years later, when a poor woman, the daughter of a servant of the duc de Brissac, who, stealthily watching from afar, had seen her father and her brother fall on the scaffold, pointed it out. The site was bought, walled in, an iron cross set up over it. Soon adjoining land was bought and the relatives of many of those who lay in the pit were brought to be in death near to the members of their family cut off from them in life by the Revolutionist axe. We see their tombs in the carefully kept cemetery to which, from time to time, descendants of the different families come to be laid in their last long sleep. In the corner closest up against the walls surrounding the pit we see the Stars and Stripes of the United States, the “star-spangled banner” keeping guard over the grave of La Fayette. The nuns of the convent have charge of this pathetically interesting cemetery. At No. 42 we see more convent walls stretching to Rue de Reuilly, now enclosing a carriage factory. At No. 61 the doors of yet another, put later to various secular uses. No. 76 is the Jewish hospital, founded by Rothschild in 1852. No. 73 is the Hospice des Vieillards, worked by the Petites Sœurs des Pauvres. On the wall at No. 88 we come upon an edict of Louis XV with the date 1727.

Running parallel with Rue Picpus is Rue de Reuilly, in long-gone days a country road leading to the Château at Romiliacum, the summer habitation of the early Merovingian kings. We see an ancient house at No. 12 and No. 11 was the historic brasserie owned by Santerre, commander-in-chief of the Paris Garde Nationale, its walls supposed to date from 1620. Santerre bought it in 1772. After the storming of the Bastille, two prisoners found within its walls, both mad, one aged, the other a noted criminal, were sheltered there: there the keys and chains of the broken fortress were deposited. The barracks at No. 20 are on the site of ruins of the old Merovingian castle. The church, modern, of St-Eloi at No. 36 has no historic interest save that of its name, and no architectural beauty.

Rue de Charenton is another ancient street. It runs through the whole of the arrondissement from Place de la Bastille to the Bois de Vincennes. From 1800-15 it went by the name Rue de Marengo, for through a gate on its course, at the barrier of the village of Charenton and along its line, Napoléon re-entered Paris after his Italian campaigns. In its upper part it was known in olden days as Vallée de Fécamp. Through the house at No. 2, with the sign “A la Tour d’Argent,” Monseigneur Affre got on to the barricades in 1848, to be shot down by the mob a few moments later. No. 10 dates from the sixteenth century. The inn at No. 12 is ancient. At No. 26 we see the chapel of the Blind Hospital, the “Quinze-Vingts,” formerly the parish church of the district. The Quinze-Vingts was founded by St. Louis for three hundred gentilshommes, i.e. men of gentle birth, on their return from the crusades; their quarters were till 1780 on land owned by the monks of the Cloître St-Honoré. Then this fine old hôtel and grounds, built in 1699 for the Mousquetaires Noirs, were bought for them. In the chapel crypt the tombstone of the first archbishop of Paris, Mgr de Gondi, was found a few years ago, and bits of broken sixteenth-century sculpture of excellent workmanship. The little Rue Moreau, which opens at No. 40, was known in the seventeenth century as Rue des Filles Anglaises, for English nuns had a convent where now we see the Passage du Chêne-Vert. We find characteristic old houses in Rue d’Aligre and an interesting old place of the same name, in Revolutionary days a hay and straw market. The short streets and passages of this neighbourhood date, with scarce an exception, from the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. Rue de la Brèche-aux-loups recalls the age when, in wintry weather, hungry wolves came within the sight of the city. The statuette of Ste-Marguerite and the inscription of No. 277 date from 1745. Passage de la Grande Pinte at No. 295 records the days when drinking booths were a distinctive feature of the district. We see vestiges of an ancient cloister at No. 306, and at No. 312 an old farmyard.

CHAPTER XL

LES GOBELINS

ARRONDISSEMENT XIII. (GOBELINS)

THE brothers Gobelin, Jehan and Philibert, famous dyers of the day, established their great factory on the banks of the Bièvre about the year 1443. Jehan had a fine private mansion in the vicinity of his dye-works known as Le Cygne. At a little distance, on higher ground, was another hôtel known as la Folie Gobelin. The rich scarlet dye the brothers turned out was greatly prized; their business prospered, grew into a huge concern. But in the first year of the seventeenth century a Flemish firm of upholsterers came to Paris and established themselves on the banks of the tributary of the Seine, entirely replacing the Gobelins’ works. This in its turn yielded to another firm, but the name remained unchanged. A few years later the firm and all the buildings connected therewith were taken over by the State, and in 1667, by the initiative of the minister Colbert, were organized as the royal factory “des meubles de la Couronne.” On the ancient walls behind the modern façade we see two inscriptions referring to the founders of the world-famed factory. This hinder part of the vast building is of special interest to the lover of old-world vestiges. The central structure, two wings and the ancient chapel of the original building, still stand, and around on every side we see quaint old houses in tortuous streets, courtyards of past centuries, where twentieth-century work goes on apace, picturesque corners densely inhabited by a busy population. For this is also the great tanning district of the city. Curious old-world sights meet us as we wind in and out among these streets and passages which have stood unchanged for several hundred years. The artistic work of the great factory was from the first given into the hands of men of noted ability, beginning in 1667 with Charles le Brun; and from the first it was regarded as an institution of special interest and importance. Visitors of mark, royal and other, lay and ecclesiastical, were taken to see it. The Pope, when in Paris in 1805, did not fail to visit “les Gobelins.” In 1826 the great Paris soap-works were removed from Chaillot and set up here in connection with the dye-works. The fine old building was set fire to by the Communards in 1871—much of it burnt to the ground, many priceless pieces of tapestry destroyed. At No. 17 Rue des Gobelins, in its earlier days Rue de la Bièvre, crossed by the stream so carefully hidden beneath its surface now, we see the old castel de la Reine Blanche. It dates from the sixteenth century, on the site of a more ancient castel, where tradition says the “bals des ardents” were given, notably that of the year 1392 when the accident took place which turned King Charles VI into a madman. But the “Reine Blanche,” for whom it was first built, was probably not the mother of St. Louis, but the widow of Philippe de Valois, who died in 1398. In the sixteenth century relatives of the brothers Gobelin lived there. Then it was the head office of the great factory. Revolutionists met there in 1790 to organize the attack of June 20th. In Napoléon’s time it was a brewery, now it is a tannery.

Rue Croulebarbe, once on the banks of the Bièvre, has an old-world, village-like aspect. The buildings bordering the broad Avenue des Gobelins are devoid of interest, but beneath several of them important Roman remains have been found, and besides the old streets running into the avenue in the immediate vicinity of the Gobelins Factory, we find at intervals other old streets and passages with many interesting vestiges; at No. 37, the Cour des Rames. The city gate St-Marcel stood in past days across the avenue where the house No. 45 now stands. In Rue Le Brun we see the remains of the hôtel where, in the early years of the eighteenth century, dwelt Jean Julienne, the master of the Gobelins. Rue du Banquier shows many curious old-time houses.

In Rue de la Glacière on the western side of the arrondissement, so named in long-gone days from an ice-house furnished from the Bièvre, and in the short streets leading out of it, we find old houses here and there. Rue de la Tannerie was until quite modern times Rue des Anglaises from the couvent des Filles Anglaises, founded at Cambrai, established here in 1664—the chief duty of the nuns being to offer prayers for the conversion of England to Romanism! Disturbed at the Revolution, they returned to their own land and the convent became a prison under the Terror. At No. 28 of this old street we see vestiges of the chapel cloisters.

Covering a large area in the east of this arrondissement is the hospice known as La Salpétrière. In long-past days a powder magazine stood on the site: traces of that old arsenal may still be seen in the hospital wash-house. The foundation of the hospice dates from Louis XIII, as a house for the reception of beggars. The present structure, the work of the architect Vau, was built in the seventeenth century, destined for the destitute and the mad. The fine chapel was built a few years later. At the close of the century a woman’s prison was added, whither went many of the Convulsionists of St. Médard (see p. 150). Mme Lamotte concerned in the affaire du collier was shut up here. And in a scene of the well-known operette Manon Lescaut is shown within its walls. In September, 1792, the Revolutionary mob broke into the prison, slew the criminals, opened the doors to the light women shut up there. We see before us the “Cour des Massacres.” Then in 1883 la Salpétrière was organized as the “Hospice de la Vieillesse-Femmes.” There are five thousand beds. In 1908 the new hospital de la Pitié was built in its grounds.

CHAPTER XLI

THE NEIGHBOURHOOD OF PORT-ROYAL

ARRONDISSEMENT XIV. (OBSERVATOIRE)

THE boundary-line between arrondissements XIII and XIV is Rue de la Santé, the name of the great Paris prison which stands there. It brings us to the vicinity of the Paris Observatory and of the Hôpital Cochin. The prison is a modern structure on a site known as la Charbonnerie, because of coal-mines once there. The Observatory, built over ancient quarries, was founded by Louis XIV’s minister Colbert, in 1667. A spiral staircase of six hundred steps leads down to the cellars that erewhile were mines. It was enlarged in 1730 and again in 1810, and the cupolas were added at a later date. A stretch of Rue du Faubourg St-Jacques borders its eastern side, and there on the opposite side we see l’Hôpital Cochin, founded in 1780 by the then vicar of St-Jacques-du-Haut-Pas, whose name it bears—enlarged in recent years. At No. 34 of Rue du Faubourg St-Jacques we turn into the seventeenth-century Rue Cassini, so named in 1790 to memorize the seventeenth-century organizer of the Observatory. Here Balzac lived in 1829 in a house no longer standing. The great painter J. P. Laurens has an hôtel here. We find a Louis XVI monument in a court at No. 10. Subterranean passages, made and used in a past age by smugglers, have been discovered beneath the pavement of this old street.

Rue Denfert-Rochereau has its first numbers in arrondissement V. This was the “Via Infera,” the Lower Road of the Romans. The name Enfer, given later, is said to refer, not to the place of torment, but to the hellish noise persistently made in a hôtel there built by a son of Hugues Capet, the hôtel Vauvert, hence the French expression, “envoyer les gens au diable vert”—vert shortened from Vauvert, i.e. send them off—far away—to the devil! Enfer became d’Enfert, to which in 1878 was added the name of the general who defended Belfort in 1870: not exactly a happy combination! Many persons of note have dwelt in this old street. No. 25 (arrondissement V) is an ancient Carmelite convent, built, tradition says, on the site of a pagan temple: an oratory-chapel dedicated to St. Michael covered part of the site in early Christian days and a public cemetery. An ancient crypt still exists. It was in the convent here that Louise de la Vallière came to work till her death, in 1710. That first convent and church were razed in 1797. The Carmelites built a smaller one on the ancient grounds in 1802, and rebuilt their chapel in 1899. It did not serve them long. They were banished from France in 1901. The chapel, crypt and some vestiges of the ancient convent are before us here. Modern streets—Rue Val de Grâce opened in 1881, Rue Nicole in 1864—run where the rest of the vast convent walls once rose. No. 57 is on the site of an ancient Roman burial-ground of which important traces were found in 1896. No. 68, ancient convent of the Visitation. No. 72 built in 1650 as an Oratorian convent, a maternity hospital under the Empire, now a children’s hospice. No. 71, couvent du Bon Pasteur—House of Mercy—founded in the time of Louis XVI, bought by the Paris Municipality in 1891, its chapel burnt by the Communards in 1871, rebuilt by the authorities of the Charity, worked now by Sisters of St. Thomas de Villeneuve. Within its walls we see interesting old-time features and beneath are the walls of reservoirs dating from the days when water was brought here from the heights of Rungis. No. 75, ancient Eudiste convent and chapel; Châteaubriand once dwelt at No. 88 and with his wife founded at No. 92 the Infirmerie Marie-Thérèse, named after the duchesse d’Angoulême, daughter of Louis XVI, a home for poverty-stricken gentlepeople, transformed subsequently into an asylum for aged priests. Mme de Châteaubriand lies buried there beneath the high altar of the chapel.

Avenue d’Orléans, in olden days Route Nationale de Paris à Orléans, dating from the eighteenth century, and smaller streets connected with it, show us many old houses, while in the Villa Adrienne, opening at No. 17, we find a number of modern houses—pavilions—each bearing the name of a celebrity of past time. Rue de la Voie-Verte was so named from the market-gardens erewhile stretching here. Rue de la Tombe-Issoire runs across the site of an ancient burial-ground where was an immense tomb, said to have been made for the body of a giant: Isore or Isïre, who, according to the legend, attacked Paris at the head of a body of Sarazins in the time of Charlemagne. Here and there along this street, as in the short streets leading out of it, we come upon interesting vestiges of the past, notably in Rue Hallé, opening at No. 42. The pretty Parc Souris is quite modern. We find old houses in Avenue du Chatillon, an eighteenth-century thoroughfare. Rue des Plantes leads us to Place de Montrouge, in the thirteenth century the centre of a village so named either after an old-time squire, lord of the manor, Guis de Rouge, or because the soil is of red sandstone. The squire, maybe, gained his surname from the soil on which he built his château, while the village took its name from the squire. Rue Didot, once known as Rue des Terriers-aux-Lapins, memorizes the great printing-house founded in 1713. Rue de Vanves, leading to what was in olden days the village of the name, crosses Rue du Château at the point where in the eighteenth century the duc de Maine had a hunting-lodge. In Avenue du Maine we see ancient houses at intervals. Rue du Moulin-Vert recalls the existence of one of the numerous windmills on the land around the city in former days. Rue de la Gaité (eighteenth century) has ever been true to its name or the name true to the locality—one of dancing saloons and other popular amusements. The Cinema des Mille Colonnes was in pre-cinema days the “Bal des Mille Colonnes,” opened in 1833. Passing on up Avenue du Maine we come to arrondissement XV.

CHAPTER XLII

IN THE SOUTH-WEST

ARRONDISSEMENT XV. (VAUGIRARD)

RUE VAUGIRARD, originally Val Girard, which we enter here, on its course from arrondissement VI (see p. 164), is the longest street in Paris, a union of several streets under one name, extending on beyond the city bounds. At No. 115 we find an ancient house recently restored by a man of artistic mind; at No. 144, ancient buildings connected with the old hospital l’Enfant-Jésus, its façade giving on Rue de Sèvres. At intervals all along the street, and in the short streets opening out of it, we come upon old-time houses, none, however, of special interest. In this section of its course Rue de la Procession, opening at No. 247, dates from the close of the fourteenth century, a reminiscence of the days when ecclesiastical processions passed along its line to the church. Rue Cambronne, named after the veteran of Waterloo, dates from the first Empire and shows us at Nos. 98, 104, 117, houses of the time when it was Rue de l’École—i.e. l’École Militaire.

The modern church St-Lambert in Rue Gerbert replaces the ancient church of Vaugirard in Rue Dombasle, once Rue des Vignes, the centre of a vine-growing district, where till recent years stood the old orphanage of St-Vincent-de-Paul. Rue de la Croix-Nivert, traced in the early years of the eighteenth century, records the existence of one of the crosses to be found in old days at different points within and without the bounds of the city. In Rue du Hameau, important Roman remains were found a few years ago. In Rue Lecourbe, known in the seventeenth century as le Grand Chemin de Bretagne, in the nineteenth century for some years as Rue de Sèvres, like the old street it starts from at Square Pasteur, prehistoric remains were found in 1903. Rue Blomet, the old Meudon road, was in past days the habitation of gardeners, several old gardeners’ cottages still stand there. The district known as Grenelle, a village beyond the Paris bounds till 1860, has few vestiges of interest. The first stone of its church, St-Jean Baptiste, was laid by the duchesse d’Angoulême, daughter of Louis XVI. The long modern Rue de la Convention is known beyond its immediate vicinity chiefly for the Hôpital Boucicaut built by the founder and late owner of the Bon Marché.

Avenue Suffren, bounding this arrondissement on its even-number side, dates from 1770. Rue Desaix was once le Chemin de l’Orme de Grenelle. Rue de la Fédération memorizes the Fête de la Fédération held on the Champ de Mars in 1790. The oldest street of the district is Rue Dupleix, a road in the fifteenth century and known in the sixteenth century as Sentier de la Justice or Chemin du Gibet, a name which explains itself. Then it became Rue Neuve. The Château de Grenelle stood in old days on the site of the barracks on Place Dupleix, used in the Revolution as a powder factory; there in 1794 a terrific explosion took place, killing twelve hundred persons. Where the Grande Roue turns, on the ground now bright with flower-beds and grassy lawns, duels were fought erewhile. This is the quarter of new streets, brand-new avenues.

Crossing the Seine at this point we find ourselves in arrondissement XVI, for to its area south of the Étoile and surrounding avenues, were added in 1860 the suburban villages of Passy and Auteuil.

CHAPTER XLIII

IN NEWER PARIS

ARRONDISSEMENT XVI. (PASSY)

WE have left far behind us now Old Paris, the Paris of the Kings of France, of the upheaval of Revolution days. The 16th arrondissement, save in the remotest corners of Passy and Auteuil, suburban villages still in some respects, is the arrondissement of the “Nineteenth Century and After.” Round about the Étoile the Napoléonic stamp is very evident. It is the district of the French Empire, First and Second. The Arc de Triomphe was Napoléon’s conception. The broad thoroughfare stretching as Avenue des Champs-Elysées to Place de la Concorde, as Avenue de la Grande Armée to the boundary of Neuilly, was planned by Napoléon I, as were also the other eleven surrounding avenues. The erections of his day and following years were well designed, well built, solid, systematical, mathematically correct, excellent work as constructions—spacious, airy, hygienic, but devoid of architectural poetry. The buildings of the Second Empire were a little less well designed, less well built and yet more symmetrical, with a very marked utilitarian stamp and a marked lack of artistic inspiration. Those of a later date, with the exception of some few edifices on ancient models, are, alas! for the most part, utilitarian only—supremely utilitarian. Paris dwelling-houses of to-day are, save for a fine hôtel here and there, “maisons de rapport,” where rapport is plainly their all-prevailing raison d’être. The new houses are one like the other, so like as to render new streets devoid of landmarks: “Où sont les jours d’Antan,” when each street, each house had its distinctive feature? Only in the Paris of generations past.

Of Napoléon’s avenues seven, if we include the odd-number side of Avenue des Champs-Élysées and of the Grande Armée, are in this arrondissement. The beautiful Avenue du Bois-de-Boulogne is due to Napoléon III, opened in 1854, as Avenue de l’Impératrice. Handsome mansions line it on both sides. One spot remained as it had been before the erection of all these fine hôtels until recent years—a rude cottage-dwelling stood there, owned by a coal merchant who refused to sell the territory at any price. Francs by the million were offered for the site—in vain. But it went at last. In 1909 a private mansion worthy of its neighbour edifices was built on the site.

Avenue Victor-Hugo began in 1826 as Avenue Charles X. From the short Rue du Dôme, on high ground opening out of it, we see in the distance the dôme of the Invalides. To No. 117 the first crêche opened in or near Paris, at Chaillot (1844), was removed some years ago. Gambetta lived for several years and died at No. 57, in another adjoining street, Rue St-Didier. At No. 124 of the Avenue we see a bust of Victor-Hugo, who died in 1885 in the house this one replaces. Place Victor-Hugo began in 1830 as Rond-Point de Charles X. The figure of the poet set up in 1902 is by Barrias. The church St-Honoré d’Eylau dates from 1852. It was pillaged by the Fédérés in 1871. Lamartine passed the last year of his life in a simple chalet near the square named after him; his statue there dates from 1886.

General Boulanger lived at No. 3 Rue Yvon de Villarceau, opening out of Rue Copernic. Rue Dosne is along the site of the extensive grounds left by Thiers. At No. 46 Rond-Point Bugeaud we see the foundation Thiers, a handsome hôtel bequeathed by the widow of the statesman as an institution for the benefit of young students of special aptitude in science, philosophy, history.

Avenue d’Eylau, planned to be Place du Prince Impérial, possessed till recently, in a courtyard at No. 11, three bells supposed to be those of the ancient Bastille clock.

Avenue Malakoff, began in 1826 as Avenue St-Denis. At No. 66 we see the chapel of ease of St-Honoré d’Eylau, of original style and known as the Cité Paroissiale St-Honoré.

Avenue Kléber began in 1804 as Avenue du Roi de Rome. Beneath the pavement at No. 79 there is a circular flight of steps built in 1786, to go down to the Passy quarries.

Rue Galilée, opening out of it at No. 55, began as Rue des Chemin de Versailles. Rue Belloy was formed in 1886 on the site of the ancient Chaillot reservoirs.

Avenue d’Iéna lies along the line of the ancient Rue des Batailles de Chaillot, where, in 1593, without the city bounds, Henri IV and Gabrielle d’Estrées had a house. Rue Auguste-Vaquerie is the former Rue des Bassins. The Anglican church there dedicated to St-George dates from 1888 and is, like the French churches, always open—a friendly English church—with beautiful decorations and furnishings. The short Rue Keppler dates from 1772 and was at one time Rue Ste-Geneviève. Rue Georges-Bizet lies along the line of an ancient Ruelle des Tourniquets, a name reminiscent of country lanes and stiles; in its lower part it was of yore Rue des Blanchisseuses, where clean linen hung out freely to dry. The Greek church there, with its beautiful Iconostase and paintings by Charles Lemaire, is modern (1895). Rue de Lubeck began as a tortuous seventeenth-century road, crossing the grounds of the ancient convent of the Visitation.

The statue of Washington in the centre of Place d’Iéna, the scene of so many momentous gatherings, was given by the women of the United States “en mémoire de l’amitié et de l’aide fraternelle donnée par la France à leurs frères pendant la lutte pour l’indépendance.” The Musée Guinet on the site of the hippodrome of earlier years, an oriental museum, was opened in 1888. Rue Boissière, in the eighteenth century in part Rue de la Croix-Boissière, reminds us of the wooden crosses to which in olden days the branches of box which replace palm were fixed on Palm Sunday. Along Rue de Longchamp, then a country lane, seventeenth and eighteenth-century Parisians passed in pilgrimage to Longchamp Abbey, while at an old farm on the Rond-Point, swept away of late years, ramblers of note, Boileau and La Fontaine among the number, stopped to drink milk fresh and pure. The name of the Bouquet de Longchamp recalls the days when green trees clustered there. Rue Lauriston, a thoroughfare in the eighteenth century, was long known as Chemin du Bel-air.

Rue de Chaillot, which leads us to Avenue Marceau, was the High Street of the village known in the eleventh century by the Roman name Colloelum. It was Crown property, and Louis XI gave it to Philippe de Commines. In 1659 the district became a Paris faubourg and in 1787 was included within the city bounds. There on the high land now the site of the Trocadéro palace and gardens, the Château de Chaillot, its name changed later to Grammont, was built by Catherine de’ Medici. Henriette, widow of Charles I of England, back in her own land of France, made it into a convent (1651). Its first Superior was Mlle de Lafayette; its walls sheltered many women of note and rank, Louise de la Vallière is said to have fled thither twice, to be twice regained by the King. The chapel was on the site of the pond in the Trocadéro gardens. There the hearts of the Catholic Stuarts were taken for preservation. Suppressed at the Revolution, the convent was subsequently razed to the ground by Napoléon, who planned the erection of a palace there for his son the “Roi de Rome.” The old street has still several old houses easily recognized: Nos. 5, 9, 19, etc. The church, on the site of an eleventh-century chapel, dates from the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, with a nineteenth-century chapel and presbytery.

Avenue du Trocadéro, since 4th July, 1918, Avenue Wilson, was inaugurated as Avenue de l’Empereur, (Napoléon III). The palace, now a museum and concert-hall, was built on the crest of ancient quarries, for the Exhibition of 1878, and the Place du Roi de Rome, in previous days Place Ste-Marie, became Place du Trocadéro. The Musée Galliera, a museum of industrial art, was built in 1895 by the duchess whose maiden name Brignole is recorded in the short street opened across her property in 1879. She had planned filling it with her magnificent collection of pictures, but changed the destination of her legacy when France laicised her schools.

Avenue Henri-Martin began, like Avenue du Trocadéro, as Avenue de l’Empereur (1858). The old tour we see at No. 86 Rue de le Tour is said to have formed part of the Manor of Philippe-le-Bel. It was once a prison, then served as a windmill tower, and the street, erewhile Chemin des Moines, Monk’s Road, became Rue du Moulin de la Tour. Few other vestiges of the past remain along its course. We see old houses at Nos. 1, 66, 68. Rue Vineuse, crossing it, recalls the days when convent vineyards stretched there. It is, like Rue Franklin, once Rue Neuve des Minimes, of eighteenth-century date. Franklin’s statue was set up there in 1906, for his centenary. We see an old-time house at No. 1 Rue Franklin, and at No. 8 the home of Clemenceau, the capable Prime Minister of France of the late war. The cemetery above the reservoir was opened in 1803.

CHAPTER XLIV

TOWARDS THE WESTERN BOUNDARY

RUE DE PASSY, the ancient Grande Rue, the village High Street before the district was included within the Paris boundary-line, dates from fifteenth-century days, when it was a fief, owned by Jeanne de Paillard, known as La Dame de Passy; it reverted to the Crown under Louis XI, and was bestowed on successive nobles. At the carrefour—the cross roads—where the tramcars now stop for Rue de la Tour, stood the seignorial gallows. The seignorial habitation, a château with extensive grounds, was built in 1678; in 1826 the whole domain was sold and cut up. The district was known far and wide in past days on account of its mineral springs. Here and there along the street we see an ancient house still standing. The narrow impasse at No. 24 is ancient. The nineteenth-century poet Gustave Nadaud died at No. 63 in 1893. No. 84, now razed, showed, until a few years ago, an interesting Louis XV façade in the courtyard, once a dependency of the Château de la Muette. Rue de la Pompe, named from the pump which supplied the Château de la Muette with water, a country road in the eighteenth century, shows few vestiges of the past. No. 53 is part of an old Carmelite convent.

Chaussée de la Muette is a nineteenth-century prolongation of Rue de Passy. The château from which it takes its name was originally a hunting-lodge, stags and birds were carefully enclosed here during the time of moulting (la mue, hence the name) in the days of Charles IX. Margaret de Valois, the notorious Reine Margot, was its first regular inhabitant. She gave the mansion to King Louis XIII when he came of age in 1615. It was rebuilt by the Regent in 1716 and became the favourite abode of his daughter the duchesse de Berri. There she died three years later. It was the home of Louis XV during his minority. Mme de Pompadour lived there and had the doors beautifully painted. It was again rebuilt in 1764, Marie-Antoinette and the Dauphin, soon to be Louis XVI, spent the first months of their married life there. It was from the Park de la Muette that the first balloon was sent up in 1783. The property was cut up in 1791, and in 1820 bought by Sebastien Érard of pianoforte fame, and once more rebuilt. Thus it came by the spindle-side to the comte de Franqueville; a big slice has been cut off in recent years for the making of a new street named after its present owner.[G]

Avenue du Ranelagh records the existence, in the latter years of the eighteenth century, of the fashionable dancing hall and grounds opened here in imitation of the Rotonde built in London by Lord Ranelagh. Marie-Antoinette was among the great ladies who danced there. The hall was closed at the Revolution but was reopened and again the vogue under the Directoire and until 1830, when it became a public dancing saloon. It was demolished in 1858, the lawns were left to form a promenade. The statue of La Fontaine dates from 1891. Rue du Ranelagh is wholly modern. Rue Raynouard crossing it dates from the seventeenth century, when it was the Grande Rue, later the Haute Rue of the quarter, to become later still Rue Basse. Florian, the charming fable-writer, was wont to stay at No. 75. We see a fine old hôtel at No. 69, and an old-world street, Rue Guillou, close by. Rue des Vignes opening at No. 72 reminds us of the vineyards once on these sunny slopes. No. 66 was the site of the hôtel Valentinois, where Franklin lived for several years and where he put up the first lightning conductor in France. No. 51 is ancient, and No. 47 is known as la Maison de Balzac. In a pavilion in the garden sloping to the Seine he lived from 1842-48, lived and wrote, wrote incessantly there as elsewhere and always. There, carefully preserved, may be seen the chair he sat in, the table he wrote at, the pen he used, and a hundred other personal relics. Lectures about the great novelist and subjects connected with his life and work are given there from time to time. We see ancient houses on to the end of this quaint street. Marie-Antoinette stayed from time to time at No. 42 to be within easy reach of her confessor, the Vicar of Passy; so tradition says. The second story of this house sheltered Béranger, 1833-35. The man of letters who gave his name to the street died at No. 36, in 1836. At No. 21, the warrior, la Tour d’Auvergne, passed the years 1776-1800. Jean Jacques Rousseau stayed with friends here and wrote his “Devin du Village.” Mineral waters, such as made the springs of Passy renowned in bygone days, still bubble up in this fine park. The modern erection, No. 19, is on the site of the ancient hôtel Lauzun, where the duc de Saint-Simon used to stay, and where the first steps were taken for the marriage of Napoléon III. At No. 11 we turn for an instant into the quaint old Rue des Eaux, strikingly reminiscent of a past age, when the tonifying waters of Passy were drunk in a pavilion on the site of No. 20. Rue de l’Annonciation began in the early years of the eighteenth century as Rue des Moulins. Here we see the church Notre-Dame-de-Grâce, built as a chapel of ease for Auteuil by the Lord of Passy in 1660, to become a parish church, a few years later. It was restored and enlarged at subsequent dates. The ancient Passy cemetery lay across Rue Lekain. Rue de Boulainvilliers stretches through what were once the grounds of the Passy Château. Rue des Bauches, opening out of it, still narrow and quaint, was in olden days a lane through the Bauches, a word signifying a marshy tract or used to designate hut-like dwellings on waste, perhaps marshy land. Passy had within its bounds the Hautes Bauches, and the Basses Bauches. We of the 16th arrondissement know the street nowadays more especially as that of the tax-paying office.

Rue de l’Assomption marking the boundary between Passy and Auteuil began as Rue des Tombereaux. The convent of the Assomption is a modern building (1858), in an ancient park. The old château there, so secluded on its tree-surrounded site as to go by the name of l’Invisible, rebuilt in 1782, was for a time the home of Talleyrand, later of the actress Rachel, of Thiers, the statesman, of the comtesse de Montijo, mother of the Empress Eugénie; the nuns came here from Rue de Chaillot in 1855. No. 88 is an old convent-chapel used as chapel of ease for Passy.

In Avenue de Mozart we see modern structures only, but old-time streets open out of it at intervals. It was in a house in Rue Bois-le-Vent, near the château de la Muette, that André Chenier was arrested in 1794. Behind No. 13, of Rue Davioud we find traces of an old farmyard and a well. Rue de la Cure refers by its name to the iron springs once there. Rue de Ribéra is the ancient Rue de la Croix. Rue de la Source, was in old days Sente des Vignes. Benedictine nuns from St-Maur settled there in 1899 to be banished or laicized a few years later. Rue Raffet dates from the eighteenth century as Rue de la Grande Fontaine. Rue du Docteur Blanche, named to memorize the organizer of the well-known private asylum in the hôtel once the dwelling of princesse de Lamballe, is the ancient Fontis Road. Rue Poussin, and the short streets connected with it, all date from the middle of the nineteenth century, opened by the railway company of the Ceinture line in the vicinity of their station at Auteuil. Rue des Perchamps, once Pares Campi, crosses the site of the ancient cemetery of the district. In Rue la Fontaine, in olden days known for its fountain of pure water, we find here and there an eighteenth-century building among the garden-surrounded houses. In Rue Théophile Gautier, a tennis-court and tall houses let in flats cover the ground where till 1908 stood the Château de Choiseul-Praslin, in its latter years, till 1904, a convent of Dominican nuns. Rue de Remusat runs along the course of the ancient Grande Rue; Rue Félicien-David was the first street flooded in the great inundation of 1910.[H] The street became a river three mètres deep. Rue Wilhem, of so commonplace an aspect to-day, dates from the eighteenth century, when it was Sentier des Arches, then Rue Ste-Geneviève. Place d’Auteuil, until 1867 Place d’Aguesseau, is on the site of the churchyard of past days. The monument we see there was set up to the memory of D’Aguesseau and his wife by command of Louis XV, in 1753. This is the highest point in the district, altus locus—the origin, maybe, of the name Auteuil, unless the name refers rather to the Druidical altars erected on a clearing here in the days when the forest of Rouvray, spreading over the whole of what is now the Bois de Boulogne, sheltered the venerable pagan priests. A church was first built on the spot in the early years of the fourteenth century. At the Revolution the church was profaned, the tombs violated. The present edifice dates from the latter years of the nineteenth century; its tower, in the form of a pontifical tiara, is an exact copy of the ancient tower. Rue d’Auteuil was in fifteenth-century days the single village street, la Grande Rue; the house at No. 2 is said to be on the site of Molière’s country dwelling, but there is no authentic record of the exact site of the house at Auteuil, near the church, where the great dramatist so often went for rest and country air. Auteuil was the retreat for quiet and recuperation of the most noted men of letters and of art of the eighteenth century: Racine, Boileau, etc. No. 59 is on the site of the house, burnt to the ground in 1871, wherein Victor Noir was shot dead by Prince Pierre Napoléon. Where at the upper end of the street we see now houses of commonplace aspect and small shops, stood until the middle of the nineteenth century the Château du Coq, inhabited by Louis XV in his childhood, and surrounded later by a horticulturist’s garden.

Avenue de Versailles, in the south of the arrondissement, shows us along its line, and in the short streets leading out of it, many old-time vestiges. The Auteuil cemetery in Rue Chardon-Lagache dates from 1800. The house of retreat, Ste-Perine, transferred here from Chaillot in 1850, is on land once part of the estate of the abbots of the old monastery Ste-Geneviève, away on the high ground across the Seine at the other end of the city. Rue Molitor has at No. 18 a group of modern houses named Villa Boileau, property once owned by the poet. Boileau’s Auteuil house was on the site of No. 26, in the quaint picturesque old Rue Boileau, where his gardener’s cottage still stands. Rue de Musset, opening out of the street at No. 67, reminds us that the friend of George Sand dwelt here with his parents in the early years of the nineteenth century.

CHAPTER XLV

LES TERNES

ARRONDISSEMENT XVII. (BATIGNOLLES-MONCEAU)

A NUMBER of small dwellings lying without the city bounds to the north, in the commune of Clichy, were known in the fifteenth century as “les Batignolles,” i.e. the little buildings. Separated from Clichy in the nineteenth century, the district of les Batignolles was joined to Monceau. New streets were built, old erections swept away: Avenue de Clichy, in part the Grande Rue of the district, was first planted with trees in 1705. At intervals along its course, and in the short streets connected with it, we find eighteenth-century houses, none of special interest. At No. 3, the Taverne de Paris is decorated with paintings by modern artists. A famous restaurant, dating from 1793, stood till 1906 at No. 7. At No. 52 of Rue Balagny, opening out of the Avenue, we see the sign “Aux travailleurs,” and on the façade, words to the effect that the house was built during the war years 1870-71. At No. 154 of the Avenue, we find the quiet leafy Cité des Fleurs. Rue des Dames was a road leading to the abbey “des dames de Montmartre” in the seventeenth century. Rue de Lévis was in long-gone ages a road leading to what was then the village of Monceaux, its name derived perhaps from the Latin Muxcellum, a mossy place, more probably from Monticellum, a mound, or from Mons calvas, the bald or bare mount. The Château de Monceaux was on the site of Place Lévis. The official palace of the Papal Nuncio was in Rue Legendre, No. 11 bis. The modern church St-Charles we see here, built in 1907, was previously a Barnabite chapel. Rue Léon-Cosnard dates from the seventeenth century, when it was Rue du Bac d’Asnières. In the old Rue des Moines we find one of the few French protestant churches of Paris.

Avenue de Villiers, leading of old to the village of Villiers, now incorporated with Levallois-Perret, was, from its formation in 1858 to the year 1873, Avenue de Neuilly. Puvis de Chavannes died at No. 89, in 1898. Avenue de Wagram in its course from the Arc de Triomphe to Place des Ternes dates from the Revolution year 1789, known then as Avenue de l’Étoile. Avenue MacMahon began as Avenue du Prince Jerôme. Avenue des Ternes is the ancient route de St-Germain, subsequently known as the old Reuilly Road—Reuilly is half-way to St-Germain—later as Rue de la Montagne du Bon-Air, to become on the eve of its début as an Avenue, route des Ternes, the chief road of the terra externa, the territory beyond the city bounds on that side. The village Les Ternes was taken within the Paris boundary line in 1860. The barrière du Roule was surrounded in the past by a circular road, now Place des Ternes. We find important vestiges of the fine Château des Ternes in the neighbourhood of Rue Bayen, Rue Guersant and Rue Demours. The church St-Ferdinand built in 1844-47 was named in memory of the duc d’Orléans, killed near the spot.

CHAPTER XLVI

ON THE BUTTE

ARRONDISSEMENT XVIII. (BUTTE MONTMARTRE)

WE are on supremely interesting ground here, ground at once sacred, historic and characteristic of the mundane life of the city above which it stands. At or near its summit, St-Denis and his two companions were put to death in the early days of Christianity. On the hill-side most memorable happenings have been lived through. In the old streets and houses up and down its slopes poets and artists have ever dwelt, worked and played, and in its theatres, its music-halls, cabarets, etc., Parisians of all classes have sought amusement—good and evil. In past days Paris depended on Montmartre for its daily bread, for the flour that made it was ground by the innumerable windmills of the Butte. The sails of many of those windmills worked far into the reign of Napoléon III, who did not admire their aspect and even had a scheme for levelling the Butte! So it is said. Reaching the arrondissement by the Rue des Martyrs, which begins, as we know, in arrondissement IX, we come upon two buildings side by side of very opposite uses: the Comédie Mondaine, formerly the famous Brasserie des Martyrs and Divan Japonais, and the Asile Nationale de la Providence, an institution founded in 1804 as a retreat for aged and fallen gentlepeople.

The hôtel at No. 79 is on the site of the Château d’hiver, where the Revolutionists of Montmartre had their club. No. 88 was the dancing-saloon known as the Bossu. No. 76 that of the Marronniers. Rue Antoinette shows us points of interest of another nature. At No. 9, in the couvent des Dames Auxiliatrices du Purgatoire, we see the very spot on which there is reason to believe St. Denis and his companions suffered martyrdom. An ancient crypt is there, unearthed in the year 1611, to which we are led down rough steps, beneath a chapel built on the site in 1887; we see a rude altar and above it words in Latin to the effect that St-Denis had invoked the name of the Holy Trinity on that spot. The crypt is no doubt a vestige of the chapel built on the site by Ste-Geneviève. It was in this chapel, not as is sometimes asserted higher up the Butte, that Ignatius Loyola and his six companions, on August 15, 1574, made the solemn vow which resulted in the institution of the Order of the Jesuits. The chapel was under the jurisdiction of the “Dames de Montmartre,” and after the great fire at the abbey the nuns sought refuge in the old chapel here, made it a priory. Several persons of note were buried there. At the Revolution it was knocked to pieces and remained a ruin until rebuilt by the abbé Rebours in 1887.

Leaving this interesting spot and passing through Rue Tardieu, we reach Place St-Pierre, formerly known as Place Piemontési, and go on through Rue Foyatier to the ancient Rue St-Eleuthère, once in part of its length Rue du Pressoire, a name recalling the abbey winepress on the site of the reservoir we see there now. Thus we come to Rue Mont-Cenis, the ancient Chaussée St-Denis, and in part of its course, Rue de la Procession, referring to the religious processions of those bygone days. And here we see before us the most ancient of Paris churches, St-Pierre de Montmartre. It dates from the first years of the ninth century, built on the site of an earlier chapel or several successive chapels, the first one erected over the ruins of a pagan temple. Four black marble pillars from the ruins of that temple were used for the Christian church: we see them there to-day, two at the west door, two in the chancel. We see there, too, ancient tombstones, one that of Adelaide de Savoie, foundress of the abbey, for the Choir des Dames was the abbey chapel, and there the abbesses were buried. The old church was threatened with destruction after the desecration of 1871, when it was used as a munition dépôt. Happily it has been saved and in recent years restored. The façade is eighteenth-century work, quite uninteresting as we see, but the view of the east end from without, the apse, the old tower and the simply severe Gothic interior, are strikingly characteristic. The cross we see in front of the church was brought here from an old cemetery near. The garden adjoining, with the Calvaire set up there in 1833, was in ancient days the nun’s graveyard. The cemetery on the northern side dates from the time of the Merovingian kings.

Leaving the most ancient of Paris churches we come to the most remarkable among the modern churches of Paris and of France—l’Église du Vœu National, commonly known as the Sacré-Cœur. It is an impressively historic structure for it was built after the disasters of 1870-71, by “La France humiliée et repentante,” a votive church erected by national subscription. To make its foundations sure on the summit of the Butte, chosen as being the site of the martyrdom of St-Denis, patron saint of the city, the hill was probed to its base, almost to the level of the Seine, and a gigantic foundation of hard rock-like stone built upwards. The huge edifice rests upon a vast crypt, with chapels and passages throughout its entire extent. It has taken more than forty years to build; the north tower was finished just before the outbreak of the war, now advancing to a triumphal end, for which grand services of thanksgiving will ere long be held in this church built after defeat. The interior is still uncompleted. Looking at it from close at hand, the immense Byzantine structure with its numerous domes, seems to us æsthetically somewhat unsatisfying, but from a distance dominating Paris, seen as it often is through a feathery haze, or with the sun shining on it, the vast white edifice makes an imposing effect. Its great bell, la Savoyarde, given by the diocese of Chambéry, weighs more than 26,000 kilogrammes, and its sound reaches many miles.

Rue Chevalier de la Barre, bordering the church on the north, was formerly in part of its length Rue des Rosiers, in part Rue de la Fontenelle, referring to a spring in the vicinity. In a wall of the Abri St-Joseph at No. 26, we see the bullet-holes made by the Communards who shot there two French Generals in March, 1871. Going up Rue Mont-Cenis we see interesting old houses at every step. No. 22 was the home of the musician Berlioz and his English wife Constance Smithson. Crossing this long street from east to west at this point, the winding hill-side Rue St-Vincent with its ancient walls, its trees, its grassy roadway, makes us feel very far removed from the city lying in the plain below. At No. 40 is the little cemetery St-Vincent. Returning to Rue Mont-Cenis we find at No. 53 a girls’ college amid vestiges of the ancient, famous porcelaine factory, the factory of “Monsieur” under the patronage of the comte de Provence, brother of Louis XV. The tower we see there was that of the windmill which ground the silex. At No. 61 we come upon a farm dating from 1782, la Vacherie de la Tourelle. At No. 67 an old inn once the Chapelle de la Trinité (sixteenth century).

Returning to the vicinity of St-Pierre and the Sacré-Cœur, we find numerous short streets, generally narrow and tortuous, which retain their old-world aspect. Rue St-Eleuthère is one of the most ancient. Rue St-Rustique formerly Rue des Dames, Rue Ravignan once Rue du Vieux-Chemin, Rue Cortot, Rue Norvins, Rue des Saules, are all seventeenth-century thoroughfares. Rue Norvins was Rue des Moulins in bygone days. No. 23 was a far-famed folie, then, in 1820, the celebrated Dr. Blanche founded there his first asylum for the insane, many of whom he cured. At No. 9 we come to an old house and alley, the impasse Trainée, a name recalling the days when Montmartre was, in wintry weather, a wolf-haunted district: a trainée is a wolf-trap. The inn at No. 6 was in the past a resort of singers in search of an engagement: the impecunious could bring food to eat there. On the Place du Tertre two trees of liberty were planted in 1848, felled in 1871. No. 3 is the site of the first Mairie of Montmartre. Passing along Rue du Calvaire we come to the rustic Place du Calvaire, erewhile Place Ste-Marie.

A very chief interest at Montmartre is the view. It is best obtained from the Belvedere built by baron de Vaux at No. 39 Rue Gabrielle, and from the Moulin de la Galette reached through Rue des Trois-Frères. Rue de la Mire was in olden days Petite Rue des Moulins. The steps we see are said to have been put there for the passage of cattle.

The cellars of the house at No. 7, Rue la Vieuville are vestiges of the ancient abbey. Place des Abbesses was erewhile Rue de l’Abbaye. On the ancient place we find the most modern and most modern-style church in Paris, St-Jean l’Evangeliste, built of concrete. The Passage des Abbesses leads by an old flight of steps to Rue des Trois-Frères, a modern street. Rue Lepic, for some years after its formation Rue de l’Empereur (Napoléon III), was renamed in memory of the General who defended the district in 1814. Numerous old streets are connected with it. Avenue des Tilleuls recalls the days when lime-trees flourished there, the lime-trees memorized in Alphonse Karr’s novel Sous les Tilleuls. In the Square where it ends is an eighteenth-century house where François Coppée dwelt as a boy. The severely wall-enclosed hôtel at No. 72 was the home of the artist Ziem. Close here is the entrance to the Moulin de la Galette. At the top of the house No. 100 there is an astronomical observatory set up under Napoléon III. The Rue Girardon, a rural pathway in the seventeenth century, was known later as Rue des Brouillards, the point no doubt from which the city lying below was to be seen fog-enveloped, as is not unfrequently the case. The old house No. 13 goes by the name le Château des Brouillards. In the impasse at No. 5 stood in ancient days the Fontaine St-Denis. Its waters were of great repute, assuring, it was said, in women who drank them, the virtue of conjugal fidelity. And here through the short street Rue des Deux-Frères we reach the historic Moulin de la Galette. It dates from the twelfth century and has seen tragic days. Its owners defended it with frantic courage in 1814, whereupon one of them, taken by the attacking Cosaques, was roped to the whirling wheel. It was again assailed in 1871. The property was owned by the same family from the year 1640, a private property, a farm, a country inn, where dancing often went on as a mere private pastime till, in 1833, its landlord, an expert in the art of dancing, decided to turn his talent to pecuniary account and opened there the famous public dancing-hall. Rue Caulaincourt, erewhile quaint and rural, has lost of late years almost all its old-time characteristics. Rue Lamarck has become quite modern in its aspect. Rue Marcadet was known in the seventeenth century as Rue des Bœufs—Ox Street. At No. 71 we find a fine seventeenth-century hôtel, now a girls’ school, hôtel Labat, and another good old house, also a girls’ school, at No. 75; at No. 91 yet another. The modern structures at No. 101 are on the site of the ancient manor-house of Clignancourt. The turret at No. 103 is probably the relic of an old windmill. Rue de la Fontaine du But records the name of a drinking fountain, demolished some forty years ago, said to have been set up there by the Romans. Tradition has it the word but was once buc, and referred to the Roman rite of the sacrifice of a buck to Mercury. According to another legend, “but,” i.e. aim, referred to the English archers who when in France made that spot their practising-ground. Rue du Ruisseau owes its name to the stream of water which flowed through it on the demolition of the ancient fountain. The seventeenth-century Rue de Maistre, bordering the northern cemetery, is the ancient Chemin des Dames. Rue Eugène-Carrière, opening out of it, was till quite recently Rue des Grandes Carrières, memorizing the big quarries whence from time immemorial has been obtained the white stone, so marked a feature of Paris buildings, and the world-famed plaster of Paris.

Rue Damrémont is modern; in the little Rue des Cloys opening out of it at No. 102 we see vestiges of a curious old cité of wooden dwellings. Rue Neuve de la Chardonnière recalls the days when it was a thistle-grown road. Rue du Poteau reminds us of the gallows of the St-Ouen road. The Avenue de Clichy and the Avenue St-Ouen which form the boundary of the arrondissement, both date back as important roads to the seventeenth century. Along them we find here and there traces of ancient buildings, none of special interest. To the east of the boulevards Ornano and Barbes, which run through the arrondissement from north to south, we find numerous ancient streets, mostly short. The street of chief importance is Rue des Poissonniers, its lower end merged in boulevard Barbes. We see several unimportant old houses along its course. The impasse du Cimetière and the schools we see there are on the site of an old graveyard. In Rue Affre, bearing the name of the archbishop of Paris slain on the barricades in 1848 (see p. 250), we find the modern church St-Bernard, of pure fifteenth-century Gothic as to style, but far inferior in workmanship to the Gothic structures of ages past. Rue de la Chapelle, known in Napoléon’s time as Faubourg de la Gloire, began as the Calais Road, then became the Grande Rue de la Chapelle. La Chapelle is a spot of remarkable historic memories. It began as the Village des Roses—in days when roses, wild and cultivated, grew in abundance in what is now a Paris slum. Then the population, remembering that Ste-Geneviève had stopped to rest and pray in the church on her way to St-Denis, called their village La Chapelle-Ste-Geneviève. Later it was named la Chapelle-St-Denis. To the church at la Chapelle went Jeanne d’Arc in the fateful year 1425. We find ancient houses all along the course of this old thoroughfare, and at No. 96 the church dedicated to St-Denis, built by Maurice de Sully, the chancel of that thirteenth-century structure still intact, after going through two disastrous fires and suffering damage in times of war. It has been enlarged in recent years. The statue of Jeanne d’Arc there dates from the reign of Louis XVI.

A popular fair, la Foire de Lendit, instituted by Dagobert, was held during centuries at the extreme end of the ancient thoroughfare. No. 122, built, tradition tells us, by Henri IV and given to his minister Sully, became in the seventeenth century the Cabaret de la Rose Blanche. At No. 1 Rue Boucry we see an ancient chapel now used as a public hall.

CHAPTER XLVII

AMONG THE COALYARDS AND THE MEAT-MARKETS

ARRONDISSEMENT XIX. (BUTTES-CHAUMONT)

IN this essentially workaday district we see many houses old and quaint, but without architectural beauty or special historic interest. Round the park des Buttes-Chaumont, a large expanse of greenswards and shady alleys, dull, squalid streets branch out amid coal-yards and factories. Beneath the park are the ancient quarries which erewhile gave so much white stone and plaster of Paris to the city builders. The name Chaumont is derived, perhaps, from mons calvus, mont chauve, i.e. bald mountain. In Rue de Flandres, formerly Grande Rue de la Villette, we see a Jewish cemetery. Nos. 61 to 65 are on the site where the well-known institution Ste-Perine, come hither from Compiègne, was first established in Paris as a convent community in the seventeenth century, removed to Chaillot in 1742, then to Auteuil, its present site. We find ancient houses, some old signs, along the course of this old street, and at No. 152 an interesting door, pavilion and bas-relief.

Rue de Belleville marks the bounds of the arrondissement. Along its course and in the adjacent streets we see many vestiges of the past. Rue des Bois shows us some fine old gardens as yet undisturbed. In Rue de l’Orme, Elm Road, opening out of it, we find the remains of an ancient park. Rue Pré-St-Gervais was a country road till 1837. From the top of the steps in the picturesque Rue des Lilas we have a fine view across the neighbouring banlieue. In the grounds of No. 40 we come upon three benches formed of gravestones. Rue Compans was in the eighteenth century and onwards Rue St-Denis. The church of St-Jean-Baptiste, quite modern, is of excellent style and workmanship. The lower end of Rue de Belleville leads us into arrondissement XX.

CHAPTER XLVIII

PÈRE-LACHAISE

ARRONDISSEMENT XX. (MÉNILMONTANT)

THE lower end of the long Rue de Belleville, its odd-number side in arrondissement XIX, went in olden days by the name Rue des Courtilles—Inn Street. Inns, cabarets, popular places of amusement stood door by door all along its course. Here, as in arrondissement XIX, we find on every side old houses and vestiges of the past, but of no particular interest beyond the quaintness of their aspect. Rue Pelleport began in the eighteenth century as an avenue encircling the park of Ménilmontant. In the grounds surrounding the reservoirs we come upon a tomb, a modern gravestone, covering the remains of a municipal functionary whose dying wish was to be buried on his own estate.

Rue Haxo, crossing Rue Belleville at No. 278 and running up into arrondissement XIX, is of tragic memory. Opening out of it at No. 85 we see the Villa des Otages. There the Commune sat in 1871, there the fate of the hostages was decided; there on the 26th May, 1871, fifty-two of those unhappy prisoners were slain. The Jesuits owned the property till its sale a few years ago. They bought and carried away the grilles and whatever else was transportable from the cells where the victims had been shut up.

Rue Ménilmontant, running parallel to Rue de Belleville, dates from the seventeenth century, when it was a country road leading to the thirteenth-century hamlet Mesnil Mantems, later Mesnil Montant. The land there belonged in great part to the abbey St-Antoine and to the priory of Ste-Croix de la Bretonnerie; a château de Ménilmontant was built, under Louis XIV, where in the wide-stretching grounds we see the reservoirs. At Nos. 155 and 157 we see old pavilions surrounded by gardens. The eighteenth-century house, No. 145, was in the nineteenth century taken by a society calling itself the St-Simoniens—some forty men who had decided to live together and have all things in common. They did not remain together long. No. 119 is the school directed by the Sœurs St-Vincent de Paul. At No. 101 we look down Rue des Cascades which till the middle of last century was a country lane: leading out of it is the old Rue de Savies, recording the ancient name of the district—Savies, i.e. montagne sauvage—wild mountain—a name changed later to Portronville (rather a mouthful), then to its euphonious present name Belleville. At its summit is an ancient fountain set there in long-past ages for the use of the monks of St-Martin of Cluny, and for the Knights-Templar; another may be seen in the grounds of No. 17.

On the Place de Ménilmontant we see the well-built modern church Notre-Dame-de-la-Croix, on its northern side the old Rue and passage Eupatoria. The quaint Rue de la Mare, a country road in the seventeenth century, and Rue des Couronnes have interesting old passages running into them.

Passing down Rue des Pyrénées, connected on either side with short old-time streets and passages, we come to the Square Gambetta, often called Square Père-Lachaise, and the immense Paris cemetery, the great point of interest of the 20th arrondissement. The site was known in long-past days as the Champ de l’Evêque—the bishop’s field. It was presently put to a very unecclesiastical use, for a rich grocer bought the land and built thereon a folie, i.e. an extravagant mansion. In the seventeenth century the Jesuits bought the property and named it Mont-Louis. Louis XIV paid a visit to the Jesuits there and subsequently bought the estate and gave it to his confessor, Père Lachaise. When Père Lachaise died the Jesuits regained the property, held it till the Revolution, when it was seized by the State and became the possession of the Municipality. Passing along the avenues and alleys of this vast, silent city on the hill-side, we see tombs of every possible description and style, wonderful monuments and mortuary chapels, some very beautiful, others ...! and a huge crematorium. Men and women of many nations and of many varying creeds are gathered there. Seen on the eve of All Saints’ Day or the day following, when fresh flowers are on every grave, lamps burning in almost every tombstone chapel, the relatives and the friends of the dead crowding in reverent attitude along its paths, the scene is singularly impressive.

On its north-east boundary we find the tragic Mur des Fédérés, the wall against which the insurgents were shot after the Commune in 1871. Blood-red scarves, blood-red wreaths mark the graves there, and we see the names of many who had no graves on that spot chalked up against that tragic wall.

On the south side of the cemetery, running eastward, we turn into the old Rue de Bagnolet, the road leading to the village of the name. Old houses line this street and the streets adjoining it, and half-way up its incline on the little Place St-Blaise we see the ancient church St-Germain de Charonne, dating from the eleventh century. An inscription on a wall within tells us Germain, the busy bishop of Auxerre, first met Geneviève of Nanterre here, and tradition says the future patron saint of Paris took her vows on the spot. There was an oratory on the site in the fifth century or little later. The eleventh-century edifice was rebuilt in the fifteenth century, but we still see some of the blackened walls of the earlier structure. The chevet, i.e. the chancel-end, was destroyed in the wars of the Fronde. We see, distinctly traced, the space it occupied bounded by the Mur des Sœurs, against which in long-gone days were no doubt stalls for the nuns of a neighbouring convent. Some ancient tombstones, too, are there, once within the chancel. Mounting the broad steps we enter the old church to find curious old pillars, ancient inscriptions, coats of arms, and in one chapel a little good old glass.

Making our way to the little cemetery of Charonne behind, we find in its centre a grass-grown space once the fosse commune of the pits into which the guillotinés were flung in Revolution days. Beyond, near the boundary wall, we see a railed-in tomb, surmounted by the figure of a man in Louis XVIII costume—Bègue, Robespierre’s private secretary. The Revolution over, his chief dead, the man whose hand had prepared for signature so many tragic documents withdrew to the rural district of Charonne, beyond the Paris bounds, led a secluded, peaceful life, cultivated his bit of land and set about preparing for his exit from this earth by designing his own tomb. He sat for the bronze statue we see here, and had the iron railing made to show all the implements of Revolutionary torture with which he was familiar, the wheel that worked the guillotine, the tenailles, etc....!

Higher up towards Bagnolet we come to a vestige of the ancient Château, a pavilion Louis XV, forming part of the modern Hospice Debrousse.

CHAPTER XLIX

BOULEVARDS—QUAYS—BRIDGES

THE BOULEVARDS

THE Paris boulevards are one of the most characteristic features of the city. The word boulevard recalls the days when Paris was fortified, surrounded by ramparts, and the city boulevards stretch for the most part along the lines of ancient boundary walls, boundaries then, now lines in many instances cutting through the very heart of the Paris we know.

The Grands Boulevards run from the Place de la Madeleine to the Place de la Bastille—gay and smart and modern, in the first kilometres of their course; less smart, busier, more commercial, with more abundant vestiges of bygone days as they stretch out beyond the boulevard des Italiens.

The boulevard de la Madeleine follows the line of the ancient boundary wall of Louis XIII, razed during the first years of the eighteenth century. Its upper part on the even-number side was one side of an old thoroughfare reaching as far as Rue de la Chaussée d’Antin, known in its early years as Rue Basse du Rempart. The latter part stretching to Rue Caumartin is of recent date. The old Rue Basse des Remparts was bordered by handsome hôtels, the dwellings of notable persons of the day: vestiges of several of them were until recent years still seen in boulevard des Capucines—Nos. 16 to 22 razed when the new street Rue Édouard VII was cut. In the reception-room of a seventeenth-century house that stood at the corner of the boulevard and the Rue des Capucines known as the Colonnade, Buonaparte first met Joséphine.

Boulevard des Italiens gained its name from the Italian theatre there in 1783. This name was changed more than once in subsequent years. After the Revolution, when the Royalists who had taken refuge beyond the German Rhine returned to Paris and held meetings on this boulevard, it was nicknamed “Le Petit Coblentz.” No. 33 (eighteenth century) is the Pavillon de Hanovre, forming part in past times of the hôtel d’Antin, which had been owned in its later days by Richelieu, then was divided into several dwellings, and in the time of the Merveilleuses one of these sub-divisions of the fine old mansion became a dancing saloon, bal Richelieu, and the meeting-place of the Incroyables. Rue du Helder, which we see opening at No. 36, was in those days a cul-de-sac, i.e. a blind alley. The bank there (No. 7) was erewhile the famous cabaret “le Lion d’Or,” and at No. 2 Cavaignac was arrested when Napoléon made his coup d’état. No. 22 of the boulevard was the far-famed “Tortoni.” No. 20, rebuilt in 1839, now a post office, is the ancient hôtel Stainville, later Maison Dorée. No. 16, till a year or two ago Café Riche, dating from 1791. No. 15, hôtel de Lévis, was once the Jockey Club. On the site of No. 13 stood till recent years the famous Café Anglais. At No. 11 was the club “Salon des Italiens” in the time of Louis XVI, subsequently the restaurant Nicolle and Café du Grand Balcon, its first story commonly known as Salon des Princes. At No. 9 Grétry lived from 1795 till his death, which happened at Montmorency in 1813. No. 1 Café Cardinal founded by Dangest (eighteenth century).

Boulevard Montmartre dates from the seventeenth century, lined in olden days on both sides by handsome private mansions; we see it now a thoroughly commercial thoroughfare, one of the busiest in the city. A modern journalist called its carrefour—the point where it meets the Rue du Faubourg Montmartre—“carrefour des écrasés.” From the house, now a newspaper office, at No. 22 an underground passage ran in past days to the Café Cardinal opposite, leading to an orangery. On the site of No. 23 stood the gambling-house Frascati, built on the site of the old hôtel Taillepied. The Café Véron at No. 13 dates from 1818, opened through the gardens of the hôtel Montmorency-Luxembourg. Passage Jouffroy at No. 10 was cut, in 1846, across the site of an ancient building known as the Maison des Grands Artistes. The théâtre des Variétés, at No. 7, first set up at the Palais-Royal in 1770 by “la Montansier,” was built here in 1807 on the grounds of the hôtel Montmorency-Luxembourg. No. 1 is the site of the Café de la Porte Montmartre, founded by Louis XV, a meeting-place of Parisians hailing from Orléans, nicknamed Guépins.

Boulevard Poissonnières (seventeenth century) begins where hung till recent years an ancient sign at No. 1—“Aux limites de la Ville de Paris”—recording the inscription once on the old wall there. Most of the houses are those originally built along the boulevard, and many old streets run into it on either side. At No. 9 we see Rue St-Fiacre, dating from 1630, when it was Rue du Figuier, a street closed at each end by gates till about 1800. The restaurant Duval at No. 10 of the boulevard was an eighteenth-century mansion. No. 14 is known as Maison du Pont-de-Fer. No. 19, now l’École Pratique du Commerce, was till a few years ago the home of an old lady who, left a widow after one happy year of married life, shut herself up in the house she owned, refused to let any of its six large flats, and died there in utter solitude at the age of ninety. No. 23, designed by Soufflot le Romain in 1775 as a private mansion, became later the dépôt of the famous Aubusson tapistry.

Boulevard Bonne-Nouvelle, named from the church Notre-Dame de Bonne-Nouvelle in Rue de la Lune, dates from the seventeenth century (see p. 59). No. 21 was built after the Revolution with the stones of the old demolished church St-Paul (see p. 12). No. 11, in 1793, with some of the stones of the Bastille. The theatre, le Gymnase, which we see at No. 38, erected in 1820 on the grounds of a mansion, a barracks and a bit of an old graveyard, was known during some years as the théâtre de Madame la duchesse de Berri, who had taken it under her patronage. Its façade was rebuilt in 1887.

The church just off the boulevard was first built in 1624 on the site of the old chapel Ste-Barbe, and named by Anne d’Autriche, perhaps in gratitude for the good news of the prospect of the birth of a son (Louis XIV) after twenty-three years of childless married life, or, as has been said, on account of a piece of good news communicated to the Queen when passing by the spot. The edifice was rebuilt in the nineteenth century, the tower alone remaining untouched. Within it we find an old painting of Anne d’Autriche and Henriette of England.

Boulevard St-Denis (eighteenth century). The fine Porte St-Denis shows in bas-relief, the victories of Louis XIV in Germany and in Holland. It has been restored three times since its first erection in 1673. The Revolutions of 1830 and 1848 began around this grand old Porte. Paving-stones were hurled from its summit. At No. 19 we see a statue of St-Denis.

Boulevard St-Martin (seventeenth century). Its course was marked out, its trees planted a few years earlier than that of boulevard St-Denis. On its handsome blackened Porte, built in 1674-75, we read the words: “A Louis-le-Grand pour avoir pris deux fois Besançon et vaincu les Armées allemandes, espagnoles et hollandaises.” Like Porte St-Denis, it has been three times restored. The Allies passed beneath it on entering Paris in 1814. The first théâtre de la Porte St-Martin was built in the short period of seventy-five days to replace, with the least delay possible, the Opera-house near the Palais-Royal, burnt down in 1781. It was the Opera until 1793. The structure we see was erected in 1873, after the disastrous conflagration caused by the Communards two years previously. We see theatres and concert-halls along the whole course of the boulevard. The Ambigu at No. 2 dating from 1828 was founded sixty years earlier as a marionnette show on the site of the present Folies Dramatiques. This part of the boulevard was formerly on a steep incline, with steps up to the théâtre Porte St-Martin. Its ground was levelled in 1850. The novelist Paul de Kock lived at No 8. No. 17 was the abode of the great painter Meissonnier. The théâtre de la Renaissance is modern (1872), built on the site of the famous restaurant Deffieux which had flourished there for 133 years. It was for several years Sarah Bernhardt’s theatre.

Boulevard du Temple, its trees first planted in the year 1668 when it was a road stretching right across the area now known as Place de la République, was at that particular point a centre of places of amusement of every description—theatres, music-halls, marionnette-shows. All were closed, razed to the ground, to make way for the grand new place laid out there in 1862. Of the old walls within which Parisians had for long years previously found so much distraction and merriment, vestiges remain only at Nos. 48, 46, 44, 42 of the boulevard. No. 42 is on the site of the house where Fieschi’s infernal machine was placed in 1835. The restaurant at No. 29 is on the site of the once widely known Café du Jardin Turc. The théâtre Dejazet records the name of the famous actrice. The two short streets, Rue de Crussol and Rue du Grand Prieuré, were cut across the grounds of the Grand Prieuré de France in the latter years of the eighteenth century.

Boulevard Filles-du-Calvaire, named from the ancient convent, dates only from 1870. The streets connected with it are older. Rue des Filles-du-Calvaire was a thoroughfare in the last years of the seventeenth century, and at No. 13 we find traces of the ancient convent. Rue Froissard and Rue des Commines, memorizing the two old French chroniclers, were opened in 1804 right across the site of the convent and its grounds. Rue St-Sébastien dates back to the early years of the seventeenth century, and we see there many interesting old houses. No. 19, with its Gothic vaulting, is probably the hôtel d’Ormesson de Noyseau, a distinguished nobleman, guillotined at the Revolution. Rue du Pont-aux-Choux, made in the sixteenth century across market gardens, got its name from an old bridge which spanned a drain there.

Boulevard Beaumarchais began in 1670 as boulevard St-Antoine. No. 113, a sixteenth-century structure, was known till 1850 as the Château. The words we see engraved on its walls—“A la Petite Chaise”—refer to a tragic incident. The head of the princesse de Lamballe, carried by the Revolutionists on a pike, was plunged into a pail of water set on a low chair placed up against this wall to clear it of the dribbling blood. No. 99, its big doors brought here from the Temple palace, is the hôtel de Cagliostro, the famous sorcerer.

Rue des Arquebusiers, opening at No. 91, dates from 1720, when it was Rue du Harlay-au-Marais. Santerre lived here for a time. No. 2 stands on the site of the house where Beaumarchais died in 1790.

Boulevard Henri IV is modern (1866), cut across the site of two old convents. Rue Castex leads out of it where stood once the convent des Filles de Ste-Marie; its chapel, now a Protestant church, is entered at No. 5. The Caserne des Célestins was built in 1892 on the site of part of the large and celebrated convent of the Célestins, an Order founded in 1244 by the priest who became Pope Celestin V. The Carmelites who at first were established here, greatly disturbed by inundations from the Seine who overflowed her banks in those long-past ages, even as she does to-day, quitted their quarters on this site. The Célestins who came to Paris in 1352 and took over these abandoned dwellings were protected and enriched by Charles V, inhabiting the Palais St-Pol close by. The Order was suppressed in 1778, before the Revolution suppressed all Orders—for the time; and in 1785 the convent here was taken for the first deaf and dumb institution organized by abbé de l’Épée. The convent chapel with its numerous royal tombs, the bodies of some royal personages, the hearts of others, was razed in 1849. Some vestiges of the convent walls remained standing till 1904. Where the boulevard meets the Quai des Célestins, we see now a circular group of worn, ivy-grown stones; an inscription tells us these old stones once formed part of the Tour de la Liberté of the demolished Bastille. They were unearthed in making the Paris Metropolitan Railway a few years ago. The birds make the remnant of that old tower of liberty their own to-day and passers-by stop regularly to feed them.

Crossing the Seine we come to the boulevard St-Germain, beginning at boulevard Sully in arrondissement V, stretching right through arrondissement VI and ending at the Quai d’Orsay near the Chambre des Députés in arrondissement VII. Though in name so historic and running across interesting ground, the boulevard is of modern formation. It has swept away a whole district of ancient streets. The Nos. 61 to 49 are ancient, all that remains of Rue des Noyers erewhile there. At No. 67 Alfred de Musset was born (1810). The théâtre de Cluny is on the site of part of the vanished couvent des Mathurins. The firm Hachette stands where was once a Jews’ cemetery. No. 160 was the restaurant now razed where Thackeray, when a young student at the Beaux-Arts, took his meals. A sign-board he painted long hung there. We see some old houses of the ancient Rue des Boucheries between Nos. 162 and 148. At No. 166 we turn for an instant into Rue de l’Échaudé, dating from the fourteenth century, when it was a chemin along the abbey moat, a street of ancient houses. The word échaudé, a confectioner’s term used for a certain kind of three-cornered cake, signifies in topographical language a triangle formed by the junction of three streets. The pavement-stones before Nos. 137 to 135 cover the site of the ancient abbey prison. Rue des Ciseaux bordered in olden days the Collège des Écossais. The statue of Diderot at No. 170 was set up on his centenary as close as could be to the house he dwelt in, in Rue de l’Égout. The hôtel Taranne records the name of the thirteenth-century street of which some vestiges remain on the odd-number side of the boulevard between No. 175 and Place St-Germain-des-Prés, where Saint-Simon lived and wrote. The little grassy square round the house at No. 186 was originally a leper’s burial-ground, then, from 1576 to 1604, a Protestant cemetery. Looking into the Rue St-Thomas-d’Aquin, once passage des Jacobins, we see the church which began early in the years of the eighteenth century as a Jacobin convent. At the Revolution it was made into a Temple of Peace! The frescoes of the ceiling are by Lemoine.

The modern boulevard Raspail opening at No. 103 brought about the destruction of several ancient streets; where the boulevard St-Germain meets Rue St-Dominique three or four fine old mansions were razed to the ground and that old street, previously extending to Rue des Saints-Pères, cut short here. A fine eighteenth-century hôtel stood till 1861 on the site of the Bureaux du Ministère des Travaux Publics at No. 244. The minister’s official residence at No. 246, dating from 1722, is on the site of one still older, at one time the abode of the dowager duchess of Orleans. That portion of the Ministère de la Guerre which we see along this boulevard is a modern construction. We see modern structures also at Nos. 280, 282, 284, all on the site of fine old hôtels demolished at the making of the boulevard. At some points of boulevard Raspail, stretching from boulevard St-Germain to beyond the cemetery Montparnasse, we come upon vestiges of the ancient streets demolished to make way for it; here and there an old house, a fine doorway, and at No. 112 a lusty tree, its trunk protruding through the garden wall, said to be the tree beneath whose shade Victor Hugo sat and pondered or maybe wrote several of his best-known works, while living in an old house close by.

Starting now from the Place de la République, we pass up the busy modern boulevard Magenta without finding any point of special interest. The Cité du Wauxhall at No. 6 was opened in 1840 on the grounds of a more ancient Wauxhall. The big hospital Lariboisière in the adjoining Rue Ambroise-Parée was built from 1839 to 1848, on the clos St-Lazare and named at first Hôpital Louis-Philippe. Its present name is in memory of the countesse la Riboisière, who gave three million francs for the hospital. The boulevards Barbes and Ornano run on from boulevard Magenta to the district of Montmartre. They are of nineteenth-century formation and without historic interest. No. 10, boulevard Barbes, was once the dancing saloon “du Grand Turc.”

The bustling boulevard de Strasbourg which boulevard Magenta crosses, a continuation of the no less bustling boulevard Sébastopol, both great commercial thoroughfares, was formed in the middle of the nineteenth century across the lines of many ancient streets and courts. Ancient streets ran also where we now have the broad boulevard du Palais on l’Ile de la Cité, crossing the spot on the erewhile Place du Palais where of yore criminals were set out for public view and marked with a red-hot iron.

The buildings we see there on the odd-number side opposite the Palais de Justice: the Tribunal du Commerce, the Préfecture de Police, the Firemen’s barracks, are all of nineteenth-century erection. So we come to the boulevard St-Michel, the far-famed “Boule-Miche” of the Latin Quarter, forming the boundary-line between arrondissements V and VI. As a boulevard it is not of ancient date. It began at its northernly end in 1855 as boulevard Sébastopol, Rive Gauche. Soon it was prolonged and renamed to memorize the ancient chapel erewhile in one of the streets it had swept away. Place St-Michel from which it starts has to-day a modern aspect. Almost all traces of the ancient Place du Pont St-Michel, as it was in bygone days, have vanished. The huge fountain we see and cannot admire, though perhaps we ought to, replaces the fountain of 1684. The arched entrance to the narrow street Rue de l’Hirondelle, once Irondelle, as an old inscription tells us, which began in 1179 as Rue de l’Arondale-en-Laas, and the glimpse at a little distance of the entrance to ancient streets on the boulevard St-Germain side, give the only old-world touch to the place. The high blackened walls we see in this Rue de l’Hirondelle are the remains of the ancient collège d’Autun founded in 1341. At No. 20, on the site of the ancient hôtel of the bishops of Chartres, is an eighteenth-century hôtel. No. 38 of the boulevard is on the site of the house belonging to the Cordeliers, whose monastery was near by, where the royal library was kept from the days of Louis XIII to 1666. The Lycée St-Louis, founded in 1280 as the college d’Harcourt, covers the site of several ancient structures. A fragment—the only one known—of the boundary wall of Henri II, is within the college grounds, and beneath them the remains of a Roman theatre were found in 1861, and more remains in 1908. Where the boulevard meets Rue Monsieur-le-Prince, the city wall and a gate of Philippe-Auguste passed in olden days. And that was the site of the ancient place. No. 60, the École des Mines founded in 1783, and housed at the Mint, at that time an hôtel Rue de l’Université, then transferred to Montiers in Savoie, finally settled here in 1815 in the hôtel Vendôme built in 1707 for the Chartreux, let in 1714 to the duchesse de Vendôme, who died there soon afterwards. This fine old structure still forms the central part of the Mining School. At No. 62 we see the Geological Map offices. In the court of No. 64 we find a house built by the Chartreux, inhabited in past days by the marquis de Ségur, and in later times by Leconte de Lisle. The railway station Gare de Sceaux at No. 66 covers the site of the once well-known Café Rouge. In the old Rue Royer-Collard opening at No. 71, in the sixteenth century Rue St-Dominique d’Enfer, we see several quaint old houses. Roman pots were found some years ago beneath the pavement of the impasse. The house at No. 91 is on ground once within the cemetery St-Jacques. César Franck the composer lived and died at No. 95 (1891). No. 105 is the site of the ancient Noviciat des Feuillants who went by the name “anges guardiens.” The famous students’ dancing saloon known as bal Bullier was at this end of the boulevard from 1848 till a few years ago.

CHAPTER L

LES BOULEVARDS EXTÉRIEURS

STARTING at the ancient Barrière des Ternes, for some years past Place des Ternes, we take our way through outer boulevards forming a wide circle. Boulevard de Courcelles, dating from 1789, runs where quaint old thoroughfares ran of yore. Boulevard des Batignolles was the site of the barrières de Monceau. The Collège Chaptal, which we see there, was founded in Rue Blanche in 1844. The busy Place de Clichy is on the site of the ancient Clichy barrier, valiantly defended by the Garde Nationale in 1814. The huge monument in its centre is modern (1869). On the line of the boulevard de Clichy stretched in bygone days the barriers Blanche, Montmartre and des Martyrs, of which at first three boulevards were formed: Clichy, Pigalle, des Martyrs united under the name of the first in 1864. Just beyond the place, at No. 112, we turn into Avenue Rachel leading to the cemetery Montmartre, formed in 1804 on the site of the ancient graveyard of the district. Many men and women of mark lie buried here. We see names of historic, literary or artistic celebrity on the tombstones all around. The monument Cavaignac is the work of the great sculptor Rude. The Moulin Rouge, a music-hall, at No. 88 is on the site of a once famous Montmartrois dancing-hall, “la Dame Blanche.” No. 77 is an ancient convent, its garden the site of a café concert. “Les Quatrez-Arts” at No. 64 is one of the most widely known of Montmartrois cabarets and music-halls. In the Villa des Platanes, opening at No. 58, we find a bas-relief showing the defence made on the place in 1814. Rue Fontaine, opening at No. 57, shows us a succession of small Montmartrois theatres and music-halls. In Rue Fromentin we still see the sign-board of the far-famed school of painting, l’Académie Julian formerly here. In Rue Germain-Pilon we see an ancient pavilion. No. 36 is the Cabaret La Lune Rousse, formerly Cabaret des Arts, of a certain renown or notoriety. The passage and the Rue de l’Élysée-des-Beaux-Arts show us interesting sculptures and bas-reliefs. Nos. 8 and 6, of old a dancing saloon, was the scene of a tragic incident in the year 1830: the ground beneath it, undermined by quarries, gave way and an entire wedding-party were engulfed. Boulevard de Rochechouart was named in memory of a seventeenth-century abbess of Montmartre; it was in part of its length boulevard des Poissoniers until the second half of the nineteenth century. The music-hall “la Cigale,” at No. 120, dating from 1822, was for long the famous “bal de la Boule-Noire.” At No. 106 we see a fresco on the bath house walls; an ancient house “Aux-deux-Marronniers” at No. 38, and theatres, music-halls, etc., of marked local colour all along the boulevard.

Boulevard de la Chapelle runs along the line of the ancient boulevard des Vertus. Vestiges dating from the days of the struggles between Armagnacs and Bourguignons are still seen at No. 120, and at No. 39 of the short Rue Château-Landon, opening out of the boulevard at No. 1, we see the door of an ancient castel which was for long the country house of the monks of St-Lazare.

Boulevard Richard-Lenoir shows us nothing of special interest. The house No. 140 is ancient.

Boulevard de l’Hôpital dates from 1760. The hospital referred to is the immense Salpétrière built as a refuge for beggars by Louis XIV on the site where his predecessor had built a powder stores. A bit of the old arsenal still stands and serves as a wash-house. The domed church was erected a few years later; barrels collected from surrounding farms were sawed up to make its ceiling. Presently a woman’s prison was built within the grounds—the prison we are shown in the Opera “Manon.” The convulsionists of St-Médard were shut up there. At the Revolution it was invaded by the insurgents, women of ill-fame set free, many of the prisoners slain. The new Hôpital de la Pitié was built in adjoining grounds in recent years. The central Magasin des Hôpitaux at No. 87, where we see an ancient doorway, is on the site of the hospital burial-ground of former days.

The fine old entrance portal of la Salpétrière, the statue of the famous Dr. Charcot just outside it, the various seventeenth-century buildings, the old woodwork within the hospital, the courtyard known as the Cour des Massacres, the wide extending grounds, make a visit to this old hospital very interesting. And the grass-grown open space before it, with its shady trees, and the quaint streets around give a somewhat rural and provincial aspect to this remote corner of Paris, making us feel as if we were miles away from the city. Rue de Campo-Formio, opening at No. 123, was known in the seventeenth century as Rue des Étroites Ruelles. Rue Rubens was in past days Rue des Vignes.

Boulevard Auguste-Blanqui, in the eighteenth century in part of its length boulevard des Gobelins, shows us at No. 17 the last Fontaine-Marchande de Paris, now shut down. At No. 50 we see the little chapel Ste-Rosalie, with inscriptions recording the names of several victims of the fire which destroyed the bazar de la Charité in 1897. At No. 68 we used to see an eighteenth-century house of rustic aspect and pillared frontal, said to have served as a hunting-lodge for Napoléon I. Subsequently it was used as the Paris hospital laundry. In more recent times the great sculptor Rodin made the old house his studio and, when forced to evacuate, took away the interesting old woodwork and the statues of its façade.

Along boulevard St-Jacques (seventeenth century) we find several tumbledown old houses.

Boulevard Raspail is entirely modern, cut across streets of bygone ages, their houses of historic memory razed to make way for it. The recently erected No. 117 stands on the site of an old house where Victor Hugo dwelt and wrote for thirteen years and received the notable men of his day. Beneath the tree we see in the wall at No. 112 the poet loved to sit and read. Reaching the top of the boulevard we see the ancient Jesuit chapel, between Rue de Sèvres and Rue du Cherche-Midi.

Boulevard Edgar-Quinet began as boulevard de Montrouge. Its chief point of interest is the Montparnasse cemetery dating from 1826, with its numerous tombs of notable persons. There we see, too, an ivy-covered tower dating from the seventeenth century, known as la Tour-du-Moulin, once the possession of a community of monks.

Boulevard de Vaugirard (eighteenth century) included in past days the course of the modernized boulevard Pasteur. We see old houses at intervals here and in the Rue du Château which led formerly to the hunting-lodge of the duc de Maine. In Rue Dutot, leading out of boulevard Pasteur, we come to the great Institut Pasteur, built in 1900, with its wonderful laboratories, its perfect organization for its own special, invaluable branches of chemical study. The tomb of its founder is there, too, in a crypt built by his pupils, his disciples. Behind the central building we see a hospital for animals. The Lycée Buffon at No. 16 covers the site of the ancient Vaugirard cemetery. Boulevard Garibaldi began in 1789 as boulevard de Meudon, towards which it ran—at a long distance; then it took the name of Javel, its more immediate quarter, then of Grenelle through which it stretched. Some of the older houses along its course and in adjoining streets, as also along the course and adjoining streets of the present boulevard de Grenelle, its continuation, still stand, none of special interest. A famous barrier wall was in bygone days along the line where we see the Metropolitian railway. Up against its wall, just in front of the station Dupleix, many political prisoners of mark were shot in the years between 1797 and 1815.

The boulevards des Invalides, de Montparnasse and de Port-Royal make one long line. Boulevard des Invalides has its chief point of interest at No. 33, the old hôtel Biron, later the convent of the Sacré-Cœur, then Rodin’s studio, and Paris home—now in part the museum he bequeathed to Paris (see pp. 192, 194).

Boulevard Montparnasse, formed in 1760, shows us many fine eighteenth-century hôtels and some smaller structures of the same period. On the site of No. 25, the hôtel of the duc de Vendôme, grandson of Henri IV, was the home of the children of Louis XIV by Madame de Montespan.

The Gare Montparnasse at No. 66 is a modern structure on the site of an older railway station. Impasse Robiquet at No. 81 dates from the fifteenth century. No. 87 is an old hunting-lodge, inhabited in more modern days by Pierre Leroux, who was associated with George Sand in founding the Revue Indépendante. Rue du Montparnasse, opening out of the boulevard, is a seventeenth-century street cut across land belonging in part to the church St-Laurent de Vaugirard, in part to the Hôtel-Dieu. The church Notre-Dame-des-Champs is modern (1867-75). Rue Stanislas, opening by the church at No. 91, was cut across the grounds of the hôtel Terray, in the early years of the nineteenth century, where the Collège Stanislas, named after Louis XVIII, was first instituted. At No. 28 of the Rue Vavin, opening at No. 99, stood, till last year, the ancient Pavillon de l’Horloge, a vestige of the old hôtel Traversière. The short Rue de la Grande Chaumière, opened in 1830 as Rue Chamon, memorizes by its present name a famous Latin quarter dancing-hall close by. Here artists’ models gather for hire at midday each Monday. Rue de Chevreuse, opening at No. 125, was a thoroughfare as early as the year 1210, bordering an hôtel de Chevreuse et Rohan-Guéménée. A famous eighteenth-century porcelaine factory stood close here.

Boulevard de Port-Royal: here at No. 119 we see the abbey built during the first half of the seventeenth century. Hither came the good nuns of Port-Royal-des-Champs in the valley of the Chevreuse, a convent founded in the early years of the thirteenth century by Mathieu de Montmorency and his wife Mathilde de Garlande and given to the Order of the Bernardines. In the sixteenth century learned men desiring solitude found it in that remote convent. Pascal made frequent sojourns there. Quarrels between Jesuits and Jansenists brought about the destruction of the convent of Port-Royal-des-Champs in 1710. The Paris Port-Royal went on until 1790. Then the abbey became a prison, like so many other important buildings, religious and secular; its name was changed to Port-Libre, and numerous prisoners of note, Couthon among the rest, were shut up there. In the year IV of the Convention, it became what it is on a more complete scale to-day, a Maternity Hospital. Women-students sleep in the ancient nuns’ cells. Most of the old abbey buildings are still intact. The tombstone of the recluse, Arnauld of Andilly, which we see in the sacristy, was found beneath the pavement some years ago. The portal is modern. The annexe of the hospital Cochin at No. 111 is an ancient Capucine convent; its chapel serves as the hospital lecture-room.

Rue Pierre-Nicole, opening out of the boulevard at No. 90, was cut in modern days across the grounds of the ancient Carmelite convent Val-de-Grâce. In the prolongation of the street we see some remains of the convent. Here in ages long gone by was a Roman cemetery, where earth burial as well as cremation was the rule. At No. 17 bis of this street we see the house once the oratory of Mademoiselle de la Vallière, who as Sœur Louise de la Miséricorde passed the last thirty-six years of her life in pénitence here. The Marine barracks, Caserne Lourcine, at No. 37 of the boulevard, are on the site of ancient barracks of the Gardes Françaises, and record the former name of the Rue Broca, which we look into here, a street of ancient dwellings. The hospital Broca, so named after the famous doctor, was formed of part of the old convent of the Cordelières, founded in 1259 by Margaret de Provence, wife of Louis XI. The convent was pillaged in the sixteenth century by the Béarnais troops, sequestrated and sold in Revolution days, to become in 1836 Hôpital Lourcine and in 1892 Broca.

The two great latter-day Paris boulevards are boulevard Haussmann and boulevard Malesherbes. The first, planned and partially built by the Préfet de la Seine whose name it bears, running through the 8th arrondissement and into the 9th, begun in 1857, is wholly modern save for one single house, No. 173, at the juncture of Rue du Faubourg St-Honoré, dating from the eighteenth century; boulevard Malesherbes dates from about the same period. Joining this boulevard at No. 11 is Avenue Velasquez, where, at No. 7, we find the hôtel Cernuschi bequeathed by its owner to Paris as an Oriental Museum. The handsome church St-Augustin is of recent erection. Besides these stately boulevards and some few others devoid of historic interest, there are boulevards encircling Paris on every side, along the boundary-lines of the city, with at intervals the city gates. The boulevards in the vicinity of the Bois de Boulogne are studded with villas and mansions, many of them very luxurious. There are modern mansions, modern dwellings of various categories along the course of all the other boulevards of this wide circumference bordering the fortifications, but with few associations of the least historic interest, beyond that of their nomenclature memorizing, in many instances, Napoléon’s greatest generals.

Boulevard de la Villette is formed of several ancient boulevards, and the name records the existence there in past days of the “petite ville,” a series of small buildings, dependencies of the leper-house St-Lazare, first erected on a site known in the twelfth century as the district of Rouvray. The black-walled Rotonde we see was the Custom House first built in 1789, burnt down in 1871, and rebuilt on the old plan. The Meaux barrier was there, bounding the highway to the north, a point of great military interest. Louis XVI returned this way to Paris after the flight to Varennes. The Imperial Guard passed here in triumph in 1807, after their successful campaigns in Germany. Louis XVIII came through the barrier gate here in 1814. The inn where the armistice was signed in 1814 was on the Rond-Point opposite the barrier. At No. 130 of the boulevard we come to Place du Combat, a name referring to no military struggle, but to bull-fights, perhaps to cock-fights, which took place here till into the nineteenth century. Close by is the site of the great city gallows, the gibet de Maufaucon of bygone days (see p. 240). And here in its vicinity, in the little Rue Vicq d’Azir, dating from the early years of last century, died the former Paris public executioner Deibler in 1904.

On the opposite side of Paris, in the boulevard Kellermann, the Porte de Bicêtre recalls the English occupation of long-past ages or may be an English colonization of later date, for Bicêtre is a corruption of the name Winchester. These boulevards of the 13th arrondissement are ragman’s quarters, the district of the Paris chiffonniers. Here at the poterne des Peupliers the Bièvre enters Paris to be entirely lost to view nowadays in its course through the city beneath the pavements.

The boulevards in the vicinity of Père Lachaise, Belleville, Ménilmontant, Charonne, date from 1789. The short Rue des Panoyaux, opening out of the boulevard Ménilmontant is said to owe its name to the days when vines grew here, one bearing a seedless grape: “pas noyau”—no kernel. Mention of the village of Charonne is found in documents dating from the first years of the eleventh century. The territory was church land, for the most part, owned by the old abbey St-Magliore and the Paris Cathedral.

CHAPTER LI

THE QUAYS

THE quays of the Seine in its course through Paris are picturesque in the extreme and show at almost every step points of historic interest. That interest is strongest, the aspect of the quays most quaint and entrancing, where they pass through the heart of the city.

Let us start from the Point-du-Jour, the “Dawn of Day,” at the point where the boundary-line of Paris touches the banlieue to the south-east. The name refers to a famous duel fought here at the break of day on a memorable morning in 1743. Taking the Rive Droite, the right bank, we follow the Quai d’Auteuil which, till the closing years of the nineteenth century, was a mere roadway along which the river boats were loaded and unloaded. The fine viaduct across the river was built in 1864-65. It was fiercely bombarded in the war of 1870. On Sundays and fête-days this quaint quay is gay with holiday-makers who crowd its popular cafés, drinking-booths and shows.

Quai de Passy was made in 1842 along that part of the old high road to Versailles. Some quaint old houses still stand there. At No. 26 we see a pavilion Louis XVI. No 32 is surrounded by a fine park wherein we find vestiges of the home of the abbé Ragois, Madame de Maintenon’s confessor, and ferruginous springs. Rue Berton, leading up from the Quai, is one of the most picturesque old streets of Paris. At No. 17 we find an extensive property and a Louis XV hôtel, once the home of successive families of the noblesse and of the unhappy princesse de Lamballe, now a Maison de Santé—a private asylum. The borne at No. 24 has been there since 1731, a boundary mark between the manors of Passy and Auteuil.

Quai de la Conférence, arrondissement VIII, dates from the latter years of the eighteenth century, its name referring to the middle of the previous century, when Spanish statesmen entered Paris by a great gate in its vicinity to confer concerning the marriage of Louis XIV and Marie-Thérèse.

Cours-la-Reine, bordering the Seine along this quay, was first planted by Marie de’ Medici in 1618, on market-garden ground. It was a favourite and fashionable promenade in the time of the Fronde; a moat surrounded it and iron gates closed it in. At No. 16 of Rue Bayard leading out of it, we see the Maison de François I, its sculptures the work of Jean Goujon, brought here, bit by bit, in 1826 from the quaint old village of Moret near Fontainebleau where it was first built. On its frontage we read an inscription in Latin.

Quai des Tuileries was formed under Louis XIV along the line of Charles V’s boundary wall razed in 1670. The walls of the Louvre bordering this quay, dating originally from the time of Henri IV, who wished to join the Louvre to the Tuileries, then without the city bounds, by a gallery, were rebuilt by Napoléon III (1863-68). Place du Carrousel behind this frontage, so named from a carrousel given there by Louis XIV, in the garden known then as the parterre de Mademoiselle, dates from 1662. At the Revolution it became for the time the soi-disant Place de la Fraternité. On this fraternal (?) place political prisoners were beheaded, while the conventionels looked on from the Tuileries windows. And it was the scene of the historic days June 20th and August 10th, 1792, later of the 24th July, 1830.

L’Arc de Triomphe du Carrousel dates from 1806, set up to commemorate the campaign of 1805. The large square, in the centre of which stands the colossal statue of Gambetta, known in the time of the Second Empire as the Cour Napoléon III, was covered in previous days by a number of short, narrow streets, interlacing. Several mansions, one or two chapels, a small burial-ground, and a theatre, were there among these streets and on beyond, and the grounds of the great hospital for the blind, the “Quinze-Vingts,” stretched along the banks of the Seine at this point, extending from the hospital, in Rue St-Honoré, its site from its foundation till its removal to Rue de Charenton in 1779 (see p. 250). Alongside the Quai we see the terrace “Bord de l’Eau,” of the Tuileries gardens. The Orangerie reconstructed in 1853 was in the seventeenth century a garden wherein was the famous Cabaret Regnard, forerunner of the modern Casino. From this terrace to the Tuileries Palace ran the subterranean passage made by Napoléon I for Marie Louise, and here was the Pont-tournant, built by a monk in 1716, across which Louis XVI was led back on his return from the flight to Varennes.

The Quai de Louvre is a union of several stretches of quay known of old by different names, the most ancient stretch, that between the Pont-Neuf and Rue du Louvre, dating from the thirteenth century. In the jardin de l’Infante, bordering the palace, here the old palace of the time of Catherine de’ Medici, we see statues of Velasquez, Raffet, Meissonnier, Boucher. Reaching the houses along the quay we see at No. 10 the ancient Café de Parnasse, now the Bouillon du Pont-Neuf, where Danton was wont to pass many hours of the day and ended by wedding Gabrielle Charpentier, its landlord’s daughter. At No. 8, built by Louis XVI’s dentist, we see a fine wrought-iron balcony. And now we come to the ancient Quai de la Mégisserie, dating from the time of Charles V, first as Quai de la Sannierie, “tools for saltmaking” quay, then as Quai de la Ferraille, “iron-instrument” quay. Its present name, too, denotes a Paris industry, the preparation of sheepskins. The cross-roads where it meets Quai du Louvre and the Pont-Neuf went in olden days by the name Carrefour des Trois-Maries, also by that of Place du Four.

The “Belle Jardinière” covers the site of the Forum Episcopi, the episcopal prison of the Middle Ages, later a royal prison rebuilt in 1656 by de Gondi, the first archbishop of Paris. Its prisoners were for the most part actors and actresses. Interesting old streets open on this ancient quay. At No. 12, we turn into Rue Bertin-Poirée, a thoroughfare in the earlier years of the thirteenth century, where at No. 5 we see a quaint, time-worn sign of the Tour d’Argent, and several black-walled houses. The thirteenth-century Rue Jean-Lantier, memorizing a Parisian of that long-gone age, lies, in its upper part, across what was the Place du Chevalier du Guet, from the hôtel built there for a Knight of the Guet (the Watch) of Louis IX’s time. Rue des Lavandières, of the same period, recalls the days when lavender growers and lavender dealers lived and plied their thriving trade here. At No. 13 we see a fine heraldic shield devoid of signs; at No. 6, old bas-reliefs. Rue des Deux-Boules dates under other names from the twelfth century. At No. 2 of this quay the great painter David was born in 1748.

Quai des Gesvres was built by the Marquis de Gesvres in 1641. The ancient arcades upon which it rests, hidden away with their vaulted roofing, still support this old quay. The shops they once sheltered were knocked to pieces in 1789. The Café at No. 10, built in 1855, was named “A la Pompe Notre-Dame,” to record the existence till then on the bridge, Pont Notre-Dame, of the twin pumps from which the inhabitants of the neighbourhood drew their water. Rue de la Tâcherie (tâche, task, work) was known in thirteenth-century days as Rue de la Juiverie. This is still the Jews’ quarter of the city.

Quai de l’Hôtel de Ville was formed in its present aspect in the nineteenth century, of three ancient thoroughfares along the banks of the Seine. Corn and hay were in old days landed here. On the walls of the house No. 34 we see the date 1548, and find within an interesting old staircase. At No. 90 opens the old Rue de Brosse, named in memory of the architect of the fine portal of St-Gervais, before us here (see p. 103), and of the Luxembourg palace, close by the ancient impasse at the south end of the church; and at the junction of Quai des Célestins, opens the twelfth-century Rue des Nonnains d’Hyères, where the nuns d’Yerres had of old a convent. Almost every house is ancient. In the court at No. 21 we see the interesting façade of the hôtel d’Aumont, now the Pharmacie Centrale des Hôpitaux.

Quai des Célestins, in the district of the vanished convent (see p. 303) has many interesting vestiges of the past. No. 32 is on the site of the Tour Barbeau, where the wall of Philippe-Auguste ended, and of the tennis-court which served at one time as a theatre for Molière and his company (1645). The walls of No. 22 are one side of the fine old hôtel de Vieuville (see p. 114). At No. 16 we find a curious old court. No. 14, once hôtel Beaumarchais, then petit hôtel Vieuville, at one time used as a Jewish temple, has a splendid frescoed ceiling. We see remains of old hôtels at No. 6 and 4. No. 2, l’École Massillon, built as a private mansion, l’hôtel Fieubet, the work of Mansart (seventeenth century), was restored in 1850, enlarged by the Oratoriens in 1877.

Quai Henri IV stretches along the ancient line of the Île Louviers joined to the Rive Droite in 1843, the property of different families of the noblesse till 1790. At No. 30 the Archives de la Seine.

Quai de la Rapée, named from the country house of a statesman of the days of Louis XV., is bordered along its whole course by old, but generally sordid, structures, in olden days drinking booths. Passage des Mousquetaires at No. 18 records the vicinity of the Caserne des Mousquetaires, now l’Hôpital des Quinze-Vingts.

Quai de Bercy, records by its name the bergerie, in old French bercil, here in long-gone days. Here, too, there was a castle built by Le Vau and extensive gardens laid out by the great seventeenth-century gardener Le Nôtre. Their site was given up in the latter half of the nineteenth century for the Entrepôts de Bercy.

Picturesque old quays surround the islands on the Seine. Quai de l’Horloge, overlooked by the venerable clock-tower of the Palais de Justice (see p. 50), went in past days by the name Quai des Morfondus, the quay of people chilled by cold river mists and blasting winds. When opticians made that river-bank their special quarter, it became Quai des Lunettes. Lesage, author of Gil Blas, lived here in 1715, at the Soleil d’Or. No. 41, where dwelt the engraver Philipon, Mme Roland’s father, is known as the house of Madame Roland, for it was the home of her girlhood. No. 17 dates from Louis XIII.

Quai des Orfèvres, the goldsmith’s quay, dating from the end of the sixteenth and first years of the seventeenth centuries, lost its most ancient, most picturesque structures by the enlarging of the Palais de Justice in recent years. In ancient days a Roman wall passed here. At No. 20 of the Rue de Harlay, opening out of it, we see part of an ancient archway. At No. 2 a Louis XIII house. Nos. 52-54 on the quai date from 1603, the latter once the firm of jewellers implicated in the affaire du collier. At No. 58 lived Strass, the inventor of the simili-diamonds.

Quai de la Cité was built in 1785, on the site of the ancient port-aux-œufs, remains of which were unearthed in making the metropolitan railway, a few years ago. Along these banks we see the Paris bird shops; the Marché-aux-Oiseaux is held here. And close by is the Marché-aux-Fleurs. Merovingian remains were found beneath the surface on this part of the quay in 1906. Thick, strong walls believed to have been built by Dagobert, inscriptions, capitals, tombstones—the remains of oldest Paris.

Quai de l’Archevêché records the existence there of the archbishop’s palace built in 1697 by Cardinal de Noailles, pillaged and razed to the ground in 1831. The sacristy and presbytery we see there now are modern. This is the quay of the Paris Morgue, the Dead-house, brought here in 1864 from the Marché-Neuf, which had been its site since 1804, when it was removed from le Grand Châtelet. For years past we have been told it is “soon” to be again removed, taken to a remoter corner of the city.

The Square de l’Archevêché, laid out in 1837, was in olden days a stretch of waste land known as the “Motte aux Papelards,” the playground of the Cathedral Staff. Boileau’s Paris home was here in a street long swept away. His country-house, as we know, was at Auteuil (see p. 275). In 1870 the square was turned for the time into an artillery ground.

Quai de Bourbon on the Île St. Louis dates from 1614. Every house along its line is interesting, of seventeenth-century date for the most part. At No. 3, we see a shop of the days and style Louis XV. Nos. 13-15, hôtel de Charron, where in modern times Meissonnier had his studio. We see fine doors and doorways, courts, staircases, balustrades, at every house. No. 29 was the home of Roualle de Boisgelon. Philippe de Champaigne lived for a time at No. 45.

Quai d’Orléans was named after Gaston, the brother of Louis XIII. No. 18 is the hôtel Roland. No. 6 is a Polish museum and library.

Quai de Béthune, once Quai du Dauphin, named by the Revolutionists Quai de la Liberté, shows us seventeenth-century houses along its entire course. No. 32 was the home of the statesman Turgot in his youth—his father’s house. Subterranean passages ran to the Seine from No. 30, and some other riverine houses. At No. 24, built by Le Vau, we find an interesting court, with fountain, etc.

Quai d’Anjou is another Orleans quay, for Gaston was duc d’Anjou. No. 1 is the splendid hôtel Lambert de Thorigny (see p. 93). No. 5, the “petit hôtel Poisson de Marigny,” brother of Mme de Pompadour. No. 7, began as part of the hôtel Lambert, and is now headquarters of the municipal bakery directors. Nos. 11, 13, hôtel of Louis Lambert de Thorigny. No. 17, hôtel Lauzun, husband of “La Grande Mademoiselle,” in later times the habitation of several distinguished men of letters: Baudelaire, Théophile Gautier, etc. The society of the “Parisiens de Paris” bought it in 1904, a magnificent mansion, classed as “Monument historique,” under State protection, therefore, in regard to its upkeep. Nos. 23 and 25 are built on staves over four old walls. No. 35 was built by Louis XIV’s coachman.

RIVE GAUCHE (Left Bank).

We will start again from the south-western corner. Here in 1777, in the little riverside hamlet beyond Paris, a big factory was built, where was first made the disinfectant, of so universal use in France, known as eau de Javel. The Quai de Javel was constructed some fifty years later.

Quai de Grenelle, a rough road from the eighteenth century, was built at the same period. The Allée des Cygnes owes its name to the ancient Île des Cygnes, known in the sixteenth century and onwards as Île Maquerelle, or mal querelle, for the secluded islet on the Seine, joined later to the river-bank, offered a fine spot in those days for fights and quarrels. In the time of Louis XIV the islet was a public promenade, and the King had swans put there, hence its name.

Quai d’Orsay memorizing a famous parliamentary man of his day, Prévôt des Marchands, first constructed in the early years of the eighteenth century, was known from 1802 to 1815 as Quai Buonaparte. It extends far along the 7th arrondissement. There we see along its borders the bright gardens of the recently laid out park of the Champ de Mars, and numerous smart modern streets and avenues opening out of it. No. 105 is the State Garde-Meuble, its walls sheltering magnificent tapestries, and historic relics of the days of kings and emperors. At No. 99 were the imperial stables. No 97, Ministère du Travail. The Ministère des Affaires Étrangères (Foreign Office), at No. 37, is a modern structure. The Palais de la Présidence, at No. 35, dates from 1722. The Palais-Bourbon from the same date (see p. 200).

The busy Gare d’Orléans, so prominent a modern structure along the quay, covers the site of the old Palais d’Orsay, and an ancient barracks burnt to the ground in 1871. In an inner courtyard at No. 1 we find the remains of the ancient hôtel de Robert de Cotte, royal architect-in-chief, in the early years of the eighteenth century.

Quai Voltaire was known in part of its course in eighteenth-century days as Quai des Théatins. It was constructed under Mazarin, restored in 1751. Many names of historic note are associated with the handsome house at No. 27, built in or about 1712, for Nicolas de Bragelonne, Treasurer of France. Its chief point of interest is connected with Voltaire. Here he died in 1778; here his heart was kept till 1791. No. 25 was the home of Alfred de Musset. The ground between 25 and 15 was occupied from the days of Mazarin till 1791 by the convent of the Théatins. The short Rue de Beaume close here shows us many interesting old-time houses. No. 1 was the hôtel of the Marquis de Villette, who became a member of the Convention, and called his son Voltaire. At No. 3 were his stables. Boissy d’Anglas lived at No. 5, in 1793, and Chateaubriand stayed here in 1804. No. 17, dating from about 1670, was the house of the Carnot family. At No. 10 we see vestiges of a house belonging to the Mousquetaires Gris, for this was their headquarters. No. 2 was built for the Marquis de Mailly-Nesle. Nos. 11 to 9, along the quai, formed the habitation of Président de Perrault, secretary to the Grand Condé. The duchess of Portsmouth lived here in 1690, and here the great painter, Ingres, died in 1867.

Quai Malaquais began as Quai de la Reine Marguerite, but was nicknamed forthwith Quai Mal-acquet (Mal-acquis) because the Queen, Henri IV’s light-lived, divorced wife, had taken the abbey grounds of the Petit Pré-aux-Clercs whereon to build her garden-surrounded mansion. At No. 1 the architect Visconti died in 1818. In 1820 Humboldt lived at No. 3. The statue of Voltaire by Caillé was set up opposite No. 5 in 1885. The house at No. 9 was built about 1624 on the ground mal-acquis by Margaret de Valois. No. 11, École des Beaux-Arts, is on the site of the ancient hôtel de Brienne, Louis XIV’s Secretary of State. Joined later to the house next door it became the home of Mazarin, by and by of Fouché, and was made to communicate with the police offices at a little distance. Nos. 15 and 17, built by Mansart in 1640, restored a century later, after long habitation by persons of noted name, was taken over by the State, and in 1885 annexed to the Beaux-Arts.

Quai de Conti records the name of the brother of the Grand Condé. Its most prominent building is the Institut de France, the Collège Mazarin, built in 1663-70, as the Collège des Quatre Nations Réunies. Its left pavilion covers the site of the ancient Tour de Nesle, washed by the Seine, which formed the boundary point of Philippe-Auguste’s wall and rampart. Mazarin’s will endowed the college for the benefit of sixty impecunious gentlemen’s sons of Alsace, France, Pignerol, Roussillon. The Revolutionists styled it “Collège de l’Unité,” then in 1793 suppressed it, and used the building for meetings of the Salut Public, later as an École Normale, then as a Palais des Arts; finally, after undergoing restoration, it became in 1805 the Institut de France, as we know it. The ancient chapel has been taken for the great meeting-hall, the hall of the grandes “Séances.” For long Mazarin’s tomb, now in the Louvre, was there. His body is said to be there still, deep down beneath the chapel pavement. The Bibliothèque Mazarine is in the part of the building covering the spot where the petit hôtel de Nesle stood of old. The greater part of the statesman’s valuable collection of books was brought here from his palace, now incorporated in the Bibliothèque Nationale, Rue de Richelieu, according to his will. It contains many precious ancient volumes and manuscripts. The house No. 15 was built by Louis XIV on the foundations of the ancient Tour de Nesle. No. 13, where we see the shop of the booksellers Pigoreau, was built by Mansard, in 1659, one of its walls resting upon a bit of the ancient wall of Philippe-Auguste. Here, on the third story, we may see the room, an attic then, as now, where young Buonaparte, a student at the École Militaire, used to spend his holidays, welcomed there by old friends of his family. The short Rue Guénégaud, memorizing the mansion once there, bordering at one part the walls of the Mint, shows us along the rest of its course, at No. 1, remains of a once famous marionnettes theatre; at No. 19 an old gabled house; in the court, No. 29, a tower of Philippe-Auguste’s wall; an ancient inscription at No. 35; a fine old door at No. 16, etc. The narrow old-world Rue de Nevers shows us none but ancient houses. This thirteenth-century street was formerly closed at both ends and known therefore as Rue des Deux-Portes. Beneath No. 13 of the little Rue de Nesle runs an ancient subterranean passage blocked in recent years. The old house at No. 5 of the quay was for long looked upon as the dwelling of Buonaparte after he left Brienne. At the recently razed No. 3 lived Marie-Antoinette’s jeweller, his shop surmounted by the sign “Le petit Dunkerque,” referring to articles of curiosity in the jewellery line, much in vogue in the year 1780. A little café at No. 1, also razed, was till lately the humble successor of the first Paris “Café des Anglais,” set up there in 1769, a gathering-place for British men of letters.

Quai des Grands-Augustins, the oldest of Paris quays, dates in part from the thirteenth century, and records the existence there of the monastery where in its heyday the great assemblies of the clergy were held, and the ecclesiastical archives kept from 1645 to 1792. The Salle des Archives was then given up to the making of assignats. In 1797 the convent was sold and razed to the ground. We see some traces of it at No. 55. The bookseller’s shop there was till recent years paved with gravestones from the convent chapel which stood on the site of No. 53. The restaurant Lapérouse at No. 51 was, in the seventeenth century, the hôtel of the comte de Bruillevert. The Académie bookseller, Didier-Perrin, is established in the ancient hôtel Feydeau et Montholon. No. 25 was built by François I. No. 23 opened on the vanished Rue de Hurepoix. No. 17 was part of the hôtel d’O, subsequently hôtel de Luynes.

Quai St-Michel was known for a time in Napoléon’s day as Quai de la Gloriette. Its first stone was laid so far back as 1561, then no more stones added till 1767, an interim of two centuries. Another interruption deferred its completion to the year 1811. The two narrow sordid streets we see opening on to it, Rue Zacharie and Rue du Chat qui Pêche, date, the first from 1219, as in part Rue Sac-à-lie in part Rue des Trois-Chandeliers, from its earliest days a slum; the second, a mere alley, from 1540.

Quai de Montebello began in 1554 as Quai des Bernardins from the vicinity of the convent—its walls still standing (see p. 136). The quay bore several successive names till its entire reconstruction in early nineteenth-century years, when it was renamed in memory of Napoléon’s great General, Maréchal Lannes.

Quai de la Tournelle was Quai St-Bernard in the fourteenth century. The Porte St-Bernard was close by. La Tournelle was a stronghold where prisoners were kept close until deported. On the wall of Nos. 57-55, now a distillery, we read the words: “Hôtel cy-devant de Nesmond.” It began as hôtel du Pain. Président de Nesmond, who owned it later, inscribed his name on its frontage, the first inscription of the kind known. The Pharmacie Centrale we see at No. 47 is the ancient convent of the Miramiones. The nuns were so named from Mme de Miramion who, left a widow at sixteen, founded this convent for the care of poor girls. The nuns had their own boat to convey the girls to services at Notre-Dame. In the chapel we find seventeenth-century decorations, and in the body of the building many interesting vestiges. On the walls at No. 37 we read the inscription, “Hôtel cy-devant du Président Rolland” (the anti-Jesuit). The old-time coaches for Fontainebleau had their bureau and starting-point at No. 21. No. 15 is the quaint and historic restaurant de la Tour d’Argent, which has existed since 1575 (closed during the war), famed for its excellent and characteristic cuisine and its picturesque, old-time menu cards, with their strong spice of couleur locale.

Quai d’Austerlitz is the old Quai de l’Hôpital. The boundary-line between Paris and what was before its incorporation the village of Austerlitz passed at No. 21. The famous hôtel des Haricots, the prison of the Garde Nationale, where many artists and men of letters of olden days served a period of punishment, often left their names written in couplets on its walls, was till the early years of last century on the site where now we see the busy departure platform of the Gare d’Orléans.

CHAPTER LII

LES PONTS (The Bridges)

ONCE more to the south-western corner of this “bonne ville de Paris.” The first bridge over the Seine within the city boundary, beginning at this end, is the Viaduct d’Auteuil (see p. 320). The second is Pont-Mirabeau, dating from the last decade of the nineteenth century. Pont de Grenelle is of earlier date (1825). The Statue of Liberty we see there (Bartholdi) is a replica in reduced size of that sent to New York. Pont de Passy first spanned the Seine as a mere footway at the time of the Exhibition of 1878, rebuilt in its present form in 1906. Pont d’Iéna has a greater historic interest. Its construction was set about in 1806. It had just been finished when in 1814 Blücher and the Allies proposed to blow it up. Royal influence prevailed to save it. It was called thenceforth till 1830 Pont des Invalides.

Pont de l’Alma, that emphatically Second-Empire bridge with its four Napoléonic soldiers, a Zouave, an infantry man, an artillery man, and a chasseur, was built between the years 1854-57. It was still unfinished when on April 2nd, 1856, Napoléon III and a sumptuously accoutred cortège passed across it to present flags to the regiments returned from the Crimea. Pont-des-Invalides was built in 1855.

The first stone of the very ornate Pont Alexandre III, formed of a single arch 107 mètres long, was laid with great ceremony by the Czar Nicholas II in 1896. It was opened in 1900.

A truly historic bridge is the Pont de la Concorde, built between 1787 and 1790, finished with stones off the razed Bastille, and called at first Pont Louis XVI. Louis’ head fell, and the bridge became Pont de la Révolution. Twelve immense statues of famous statesmen and warriors were set up on it in 1828. They were considered too big, and in 1851 were taken away to the Cour d’Honneur de Versailles.

Pont de Solferino, built in 1858, records the victorious Italian campaigns of 1859.

Pont-Royal was designed by Mansart and built in 1689 by Dominican monks to replace a smaller, more primitive bridge which had been known successively as Pont-Barlier, Pont-des-Tuileries, Pont-Rouge, and Pont Ste-Anne; it underwent restoration in 1841. Pont des Saints-Pères, or Pont du Carrousel was one of the last of Paris bridges to pay toll; built in 1834, restored in recent years.

Pont-des-Arts, so called from its vicinity to the Louvre, leading in a straight line from the colonnaded archway of the Court Carrée to the Institut, was opened in 1804, restored 1854.

Pont-Neuf, the most characteristic of Paris bridges, dates back to the reign of Henri III. The King himself laid its first stone in 1578, but it was not finished till 1603, when Henri IV was King. “Le bon Roi” determined to be the first to cross it on horseback, and while it was still unsafe spurred his thoroughbred along the unfinished bridge way. His lords, hastening to follow where their master led, were jolted out of their saddles, and falling upon the unparapeted structure, rolled into the river and were drowned. Louis XIII set up a statue of his father on horseback on the bridge; the statue of the horse was a gift from Cosimo de’ Medici to Louis’ mother. At the Revolution it was overturned, taken away, and melted down to make cannons for the insurgents. Louis XVIII replaced it by a statue made of the bronze of the first statue of Napoléon that had been set up on Place Vendôme and that of his general, Desaix, on Place des Victoires. Though set up by the Bourbon King, the figure we see is believed to contain within it a statuette of Napoléon I and Voltaire’s Henriade. Until 1848 there were shops within the semicircles we see on either side of the old bridge, and beneath the second archway near the right bank there was one of the first hydraulic pumps, known as “la Samaritaine.” Its water was conveyed to the Louvre, the Tuileries, and to houses all around, and fed the famous old fountain built in 1608, destroyed a century later, rebuilt in 1715, again destroyed after another hundred years, with the figure of the Samaritan woman giving water to our Saviour. The bathing-house near the spot with its sign, and the big modern shop of hideous aspect, alone remain to record the name of the ancient pump and fountain. Two or three ancient houses still stand on the Place du Pont-Neuf in the middle of the bridge. At its picturesque western point we see the tree-shaded square Henri IV, known also as the Square du Vert-Galant. Place Dauphine, at its south-western side, dates from the days when Henri’s son, later Louis XIII, was dauphin.

The Pont St-Michel we see to-day was built in 1857. The first bridge there, joining the mainland to the island on the Seine, was constructed towards the close of the fourteenth century. That bridge and two successive ones were destroyed by fire.

Pont-au-Change, the Money-changers’ Bridge, was in olden days a wooden construction which went by the names Pont de la Marchandise and Pont-aux-Oiseaux. Jewellers as well as money-changers plied their trade along its planks, perhaps also bird merchants. It was a little higher up the river in its early twelfth century days and was often flooded. It was badly burnt, too, more than once; then in the seventeenth century was entirely rebuilt of stone, and bronze statues of the royal family, Louis XIII, Louis XIV as a child, and Anne d’Autriche, set up there. In the century following the houses upon it were all cleared away and in 1858 it was again rebuilt.

The Petit-Pont joins the Île to the left bank at the very same spot where the Romans made a bridge across the river, one of two which spanned the Seine in their day, and on beyond. Like all town bridges of the Middle Ages it was made of wood and each side thickly built upon by houses and shops; windmills, too, stood on this ancient bridge, grinding corn for the citizens around. And where we now see the Place du Petit-Pont there stood a wooden tower, la Tour de Bois, erected to protect the bridge against the invading Normans. At the Musée Carnavalet an ancient inscription may be seen, recording the names of twelve warriors who fought here to defend their city, led by Gozlin, bishop of Paris, in 886. In the twelfth century Maurice de Sully, the builder of Notre-Dame, rebuilt the bridge in stone, but flood and fire laid it in ruins time after time. The last destructive fire was in the spring of 1718. It was then rebuilt minus its wooden houses. The present structure dates from 1853. The place was built in 1782, when the Petit Châtelet, which had succeeded the Tour de Bois, was razed. In Rue du Petit-Pont we see some old houses on the odd number side. Many were demolished when the street was widened a few years ago.

The other bridge of Roman times, succeeding no doubt a rude primitive bridge, stretched where the Pont Notre-Dame now spans the river. The Roman bridge, built on staves, was overthrown by the Normans in 861. Rebuilt as Pont Notre-Dame in 1413, it crashed to pieces some eighty years later, carrying down with it the house of a famous printer of the day. It was alternatively destroyed and rebuilt several times till its last reconstruction in 1853. Its houses were the first in France to be numbered (1507). There were sixty-eight of them and the numbering was done in gold or gilded ciphers. All these old houses were pulled down in 1786. Pont Notre-Dame was the “bridge of honour.” Sovereigns coming to Paris in state crossed it to enter the city. Close up to it stood for nearly two hundred years—1670 to 1856—the Pompe Notre-Dame, from which all the fountains of the district were supplied with water.

Pont d’Arcole, built as we now see it in 1854, succeeded a wooden bridge erected in 1828 with the name Pont de la Grève, commonly called Pont de la Balance. It gained its present name, recalling Napoléon’s victory of 1796, in the Revolution of 1830, when a youth at the head of a band of insurgents rushed upon the bridge waving the tricolor and shouting: “If I die, remember my name is Arcole.”

Pont-au-Double, so called because to cross it passengers paid a double toll for the benefit of the Hôtel-Dieu, is a nineteenth-century construction, replacing the original bridge of the name built in the sixteenth century, a little higher up the river.

Pont de l’Archevêché dates from 1828. Pont St-Louis, joining l’Île de la Cité to l’Île St-Louis, was built in 1614 as a wooden bridge painted red and called, therefore, Pont-Rouge. Like all wooden erections of the age, it was damaged by fire, and in the eighteenth century at the time of the Revolution, “icebergs” on the Seine knocked it over. An iron footbridge was put up in its place and remained till 1862, when the bridge we see was built.

Pont Louis-Philippe was built in the same year to replace a suspension bridge paying toll.

Pont de la Tournelle, built as we see it in 1851, began as a wooden bridge of fourteenth-century erection.[I]

Pont Marie was not, as one might suppose, named in honour of the Virgin, nor after Marie de’ Medici, who laid its first stone. It simply records the name of its constructor, who was “Entrepreneur-Général des Ponts de France” at the time. Fifty houses were built upon it. Some were destroyed by floods a few years later, others razed in 1788. The two Ponts de Sully are, except Pont de Tolbiac, the most modern of Paris bridges, built some years after the Franco-Prussian war, replacing two older bridges of slight importance. Pont d’Austerlitz dates from 1806, the year of the great battle. When the Emperor fell the Allies demanded the suppression of the name, and the French Government of the day called the bridge Pont du Jardin du Roi, referring to the Jardin des Plantes in its vicinity (see p. 155). The name did not catch on. The people would have none of it. It has remained a reminder of Napoléon’s victory. It has been enlarged more than once, the last time in 1885. Pont de Bercy was built in 1835, rebuilt 1864. Pont de Tolbiac, in 1895. Pont National, a footbridge, in 1853.

INDEX TO HISTORIC PERSONS

INDEX TO STREETS

Note.—For Names of Bridges, Historical Buildings and Quays see the chapters dealing with them.

FOOTNOTES:

[A] The pictures have been arranged on a different plan since their return to the palace after the war.

[B] Part of Rue de Beaubourg, Rue du Renard, and other old streets here are soon to disappear, their area transformed into a wide new avenue.

[C] Bombs worked havoc here in the last year of the Great War (1914-1918).

[D] The carting away of these vestiges has, we hear, just been decreed.

[E] On the Peace Fête, July 14th, 1919, the Arènes were arranged as a theatre, and the performance of a classical play, “Le Cid,” took place on the spot where wild beasts had fought of yore; while twentieth-century Frenchmen sat on the very stone seats whereon had sat Romans and men of primitive Gallic tribes in the earliest days of the history of Paris and of France.

[F] On July 14th, 1919, the French Army and contingents from the armies of the Allies, victorious after the dread war which had raged since August, 1914, passed in triumphal procession beneath the Arch, and the chains which, since 1871, had barred its passage, were taken away for good. On November 11th, when the “unknown soldier” was buried in Westminster Abbey, the “poilu inconnu” was laid beneath the Arc de Triomphe, and is now buried there.

[G] Le comte de Franqueville died in January, 1920.

[H] It was flooded again in 1920.

[I] It was recently demolished to be replaced by a suspension-bridge in order to leave the river free for navigation.

CHAPTER		PAGE
I.	Three Palaces	1
II.	Among Old Streets	22
III.	The Neighbourhood of the Great Markets	35
IV.	The Palais de Justice	45
V.	The Neighbourhood of the Bibliothèque Nationale	51
VI.	Round about Arts et Métiers (the Arts and Crafts Institution)	62
VII.	The Temple	70
VIII.	The Home of Madame de Sévigné	81
IX.	Notre-Dame	86
X.	L’Île St-Louis	92
XI.	L’Hôtel de Ville and its Surroundings	94
XII.	The Old Quartier St-Pol	112
XIII.	La Place des Vosges	119
XIV.	The Bastille	123
XV.	In the Vicinity of Two Ancient Churches	126
XVI.	In the Region of the Schools	137
XVII.	La Montagne Ste-Geneviève	144
XVIII.	In the Valley of the Bièvre	149
XIX.	Rue St-Jacques	152
XX.	Le Jardin des Plantes	155
XXI.	The Luxembourg	162
XXII.	Les Carmes	168
XXIII.	On Ancient Abbey Ground	170
XXIV.	In the Vicinity of Place St-Michel	181
XXV.	L’Odéon	184
XXVI.	Round about the Carrefour de la Croix-Rouge	186
XXVII.	Hôtel des Invalides	190
XXVIII.	Old-time Mansions of the Rive Gauche	194
XXIX.	Ancient Streets of the Faubourg Saint-Germain	203
XXX.	The Madeleine and its Neighbourhood	208
XXXI.	Les Champs-Élysées	213
XXXII.	Faubourg St-Honoré	216
XXXIII.	Parc Monceau	221
XXXIV.	In the Vicinity of the Opera	223
XXXV.	On the Way to Montmartre	227
XXXVI.	On the Slopes of the Butte	232
XXXVII.	Three Ancient Faubourgs	236
XXXVIII.	In the Paris “East End”	243
XXXIX.	On Tragic Ground	246
XL.	Les Gobelins	251
XLI.	The Neighbourhood of Port-Royal	256
XLII.	In the South-West	260
XLIII.	In Newer Paris	263
XLIV.	Towards the Western Boundary	269
XLV.	Les Ternes	276
XLVI.	On the Butte	278
XLVII.	Among the Coalyards and the Meat-markets	290
XLVIII.	Père-Lachaise	292
XLIX.	Boulevards—Quays—Bridges	297
L.	Les Boulevards Extérieurs	309
LI.	The Quays	320
LII.	Les Ponts	337
	Index To Historic Persons
	Index To Streets

La Tour de L’Horloge, les “Tour pointues” de la Conciergerie et le Marché aux Fleurs	Frontispiece
	PAGE
Le Vieux Louvre	3
The Louvre of To-day	5
Palais des Tuileries	9
Palais-Royal	15
L’Église St-Germain-l’Auxerrois	20
Place et Colonne Vendôme	31
Portail de St-Eustache	37
La Tour de L’Horloge, les “Tours Pointues” de la Conciergerie et le Marché aux Fleurs	46
La Sainte-Chapelle	48
Rue Quincampoix	63
St-Nicolas-des-Champs	65
Rue Beaubourg	67
La Porte du Temple	71
Porte de Clisson	75
Ruelle de Sourdis	77
Hôtel Vendôme, Rue Béranger	79
Notre-Dame	87
Rue Massillon	89
Place de Grève	95
La Tour St-Jacques	97
View across the Seine from Place du Châtelet	99
Rue Brisemiche	101
L’Église St-Gervais	103
Hôtel de Beauvais, Rue François-Miron	105
Rue Vieille-du-Temple	109
Rue Éginhard	113
Rue du Prévôt	115
Hôtel de Sens	117
Rue de Birague, Place des Vosges	121
La Bastille	124
Rue St-Séverin	127
Église St-Séverin	129
Hôtel Louis XV, Rue de la Parcheminerie	131
St-Julien-le-Pauvre	133
Bas-relief, Rue Galande	134
Le Musée de Cluny	139
St-Étienne-du-Mont	145
Interior of St-Étienne-du-Mont	147
Rue Mouffetard et St-Médard	150
Jardin et Palais du Luxembourg	163
L’Abbaye St-Germain-des-Prés	171
Cour de Rohan	179
Rue Hautefeuille	183
Castel de la Reine Blanche	253
La Salpétrière	255
Rue des Eaux, Passy	271
St-Pierre de Montmartre	281
Vieux Montmartre, Rue St-Vincent	282
Rue Mont-Cenis: Chapelle de la Trinité	283
Vieux Montmartre: Cabaret du Lapin-Agile	284
Moulin de la Galette	287
Le Mur des Fédérés	295
Old Well at Salpétrière	311
Cloître de l’Abbaye de Port-Royal	315
Remains of the Convent des Capucins	317
Hôtel de Fieubet, Quai des Célestins	325
Quai des Grands-Augustins	333
Le Pont des Arts et l’Institut	338
Pont-Neuf	339

Typographical errors corrected by the etext transcriber:
here in invitation of the Rotonde=> here in imitation of the Rotonde {pg 270}
Demoulins=> Desmoulins {pg 17}
King Jerôme=> King Jérôme {pg 17}
Sebastopol=> Sébastopol {pg 42}
Sophie Arnoult=> Sophie Arnould {pg 60}
Rue Jean-de-Beauvias=> Rue Jean-de-Beauvais {pg 140}
Aqueduc d’Arcueil brought water from Rangis=> Aqueduc d’Arcueil brought water from Rungis {pg 152}
Rue de l’Abbé-de-l’Epée=> Rue de l’Abbé-de-l’Épée {pg 153}
restauraunt Lapérouse => restaurant Lapérouse {pg 180}
days of unparalled warfare=> days of unparalleled warfare {pg 190}
cut if off from surrounding buildings=> cut it off from surrounding buildings {pg 218}
St-Marguerite=> Ste-Marguerite {pg 245}
patronage of the comte de Province=> patronage of the comte de Provence {pg 284}
its euphonius present name=> its euphonious present name {pg 293}
Aubriot, Prêvot de Paris (13th century), 107=> Aubriot, Prévôt de Paris (13th century), 107 {index}
Bourbon-Condè, Mlle. de, Abbesse de Remiremont, 193 Bourbon-Condé, Mlle. de, Abbesse de Remiremont, 193 {index}
Enghien, Duc de, 170, 193, 217=> Enghien, Duc d’, 170, 193, 217 {index}
Enghien, Duchesse de, 170=> Enghien, Duchesse d’, 170 {index}
Estrées, Duchesse de, 197=> Estrées, Duchesse d’, 197 {index}
Isore or Isire, 258=> Isore or Isïre, 258 {index}
Marie de’ Medici, Queen=> Marie de’ Medicis, Queen {index}
Monvoisin, Cathérine, 59=> Monvoisin, Catherine, 59 {index}
Musset, Alfred de, 27, 29, 175, 197, 217, 231, 275, 204, 330=> Musset, Alfred de, 27, 29, 175, 197, 217, 231, 275, 304, 330 {index}
Orléans, Duc de (circ. 1844), 277=> Orléans, Duc d’ (circ. 1844), 277 {index}
Paillard, Jeanne d’, 269=> Paillard, Jeanne de, 269 {index}
Ste-Généviève, 144, 146, 147, 164, 279, 289, 295=> Ste-Geneviève, 144, 146, 147, 164, 279, 289, 295 {index}
Sevigné=> Sévigné {index}
Thierry, Amedée, 209=> Thierry, Amédée, 209 {index}
Antoine, Dubois, Rue, 185=> Antoine-Dubois, Rue, 185 {index}
Böêtie, Rue de la, 219=> Bôëtie, Rue de la, 219 {index}
Banquier, Rue de, 254=> Banquier, Rue du, 254 {index}
Buonaparte, Rue, 170, 206=> Bonaparte, Rue, 170, 206 {index}
Carmes, Rue Basse de, 140=> Carmes, Rue Basse des, 140 {index}
Napoleon=> Napoléon {numerous instances}

HISTORIC PARIS

PREFACE

CONTENTS

ILLUSTRATIONS

HISTORIC PARIS

CHAPTER I THREE PALACES

THE LOUVRE

THE TUILERIES

THE PALAIS-ROYAL

CHAPTER II AMONG OLD STREETS

PLACE VENDÔME

CHAPTER III THE NEIGHBOURHOOD OF THE GREAT MARKETS

LES HALLES CENTRALES

CHAPTER IV THE PALAIS DE JUSTICE

CHAPTER V THE NEIGHBOURHOOD OF THE BIBLIOTHÈQUE NATIONALE

ARRONDISSEMENT II. (BOURSE)

CHAPTER VI ROUND ABOUT THE ARTS ET MÉTIERS (THE ARTS AND CRAFTS INSTITUTION)

ARRONDISSEMENT III. (TEMPLE)

CHAPTER VII THE TEMPLE

CHAPTER VIII THE HOME OF MADAME DE SÉVIGNÉ

CHAPTER IX NOTRE-DAME

ARRONDISSEMENT IV. (HÔTEL-DE-VILLE)

CHAPTER X L’ÎLE ST-LOUIS

CHAPTER XI L’HÔTEL DE VILLE AND ITS SURROUNDINGS

CHAPTER XII THE OLD QUARTIER ST-POL

CHAPTER XIII LA PLACE DES VOSGES

CHAPTER XIV THE BASTILLE

CHAPTER XV IN THE VICINITY OF TWO ANCIENT CHURCHES

ARRONDISSEMENT V. PANTHÉON. RIVE GAUCHE (LEFT BANK)

CHAPTER XVI IN THE REGION OF THE SCHOOLS

THE SORBONNE AND ITS SURROUNDINGS

CHAPTER XVII LA MONTAGNE STE-GENEVIÈVE

CHAPTER XVIII IN THE VALLEY OF THE BIÈVRE

CHAPTER XIX RUE ST-JACQUES

CHAPTER XX LE JARDIN DES PLANTES

CHAPTER XXI THE LUXEMBOURG

ARRONDISSEMENT VI. (LUXEMBOURG)

CHAPTER XXII LES CARMES

CHAPTER XXIII ON ANCIENT ABBEY GROUND

CHAPTER XXIV IN THE VICINITY OF PLACE ST-MICHEL

CHAPTER XXV L’ODÉON

CHAPTER XXVI ROUND ABOUT THE CARREFOUR DE LA CROIX-ROUGE

CHAPTER XXVII HÔTEL DES INVALIDES

ARRONDISSEMENT VII. (PALAIS-BOURBON)

CHAPTER XXVIII OLD-TIME MANSIONS OF THE RIVE GAUCHE

ARRONDISSEMENT VII. PALAIS-BOURBON

CHAPTER XXIX ANCIENT STREETS OF THE FAUBOURG SAINT-GERMAIN

CHAPTER XXX THE MADELEINE AND ITS NEIGHBOURHOOD

ARRONDISSEMENT VIII. (ÉLYSÉE)

CHAPTER XXXI LES CHAMPS-ÉLYSÉES

CHAPTER XXXII FAUBOURG ST-HONORÉ

CHAPTER XXXIII PARC MONCEAU

CHAPTER XXXIV IN THE VICINITY OF THE OPERA

ARRONDISSEMENT IX. (OPÉRA)

CHAPTER XXXV ON THE WAY TO MONTMARTRE

CHAPTER XXXVI ON THE SLOPES OF THE BUTTE

CHAPTER XXXVII THREE ANCIENT FAUBOURGS

ARRONDISSEMENT X. (ENTREPÔT)

CHAPTER XXXVIII IN THE PARIS “EAST END”

CHAPTER XXXIX ON TRAGIC GROUND

CHAPTER XL LES GOBELINS

ARRONDISSEMENT XIII. (GOBELINS)

CHAPTER XLI THE NEIGHBOURHOOD OF PORT-ROYAL

ARRONDISSEMENT XIV. (OBSERVATOIRE)

CHAPTER XLII IN THE SOUTH-WEST

ARRONDISSEMENT XV. (VAUGIRARD)

CHAPTER XLIII IN NEWER PARIS

ARRONDISSEMENT XVI. (PASSY)

CHAPTER XLIV TOWARDS THE WESTERN BOUNDARY

CHAPTER XLV LES TERNES

ARRONDISSEMENT XVII. (BATIGNOLLES-MONCEAU)

CHAPTER XLVI ON THE BUTTE

ARRONDISSEMENT XVIII. (BUTTE MONTMARTRE)

CHAPTER XLVII AMONG THE COALYARDS AND THE MEAT-MARKETS

ARRONDISSEMENT XIX. (BUTTES-CHAUMONT)

CHAPTER XLVIII PÈRE-LACHAISE

ARRONDISSEMENT XX. (MÉNILMONTANT)

CHAPTER XLIX BOULEVARDS—QUAYS—BRIDGES

THE BOULEVARDS

CHAPTER L LES BOULEVARDS EXTÉRIEURS

CHAPTER I

THREE PALACES

CHAPTER II

AMONG OLD STREETS

CHAPTER III

THE NEIGHBOURHOOD OF THE GREAT MARKETS

CHAPTER IV

THE PALAIS DE JUSTICE

CHAPTER V

THE NEIGHBOURHOOD OF THE BIBLIOTHÈQUE NATIONALE

CHAPTER VI

ROUND ABOUT THE ARTS ET MÉTIERS (THE ARTS AND CRAFTS INSTITUTION)

CHAPTER VII

THE TEMPLE

CHAPTER VIII

THE HOME OF MADAME DE SÉVIGNÉ

CHAPTER IX

NOTRE-DAME

CHAPTER X

L’ÎLE ST-LOUIS

CHAPTER XI

L’HÔTEL DE VILLE AND ITS SURROUNDINGS

CHAPTER XII

THE OLD QUARTIER ST-POL

CHAPTER XIII

LA PLACE DES VOSGES

CHAPTER XIV

THE BASTILLE

CHAPTER XV

IN THE VICINITY OF TWO ANCIENT CHURCHES

CHAPTER XVI

IN THE REGION OF THE SCHOOLS

CHAPTER XVII

LA MONTAGNE STE-GENEVIÈVE

CHAPTER XVIII

IN THE VALLEY OF THE BIÈVRE

CHAPTER XIX

RUE ST-JACQUES

CHAPTER XX

LE JARDIN DES PLANTES

CHAPTER XXI

THE LUXEMBOURG

CHAPTER XXII

LES CARMES

CHAPTER XXIII

ON ANCIENT ABBEY GROUND

CHAPTER XXIV

IN THE VICINITY OF PLACE ST-MICHEL

CHAPTER XXV

L’ODÉON

CHAPTER XXVI

ROUND ABOUT THE CARREFOUR DE LA CROIX-ROUGE

CHAPTER XXVII

HÔTEL DES INVALIDES

CHAPTER XXVIII

OLD-TIME MANSIONS OF THE RIVE GAUCHE

CHAPTER XXIX

ANCIENT STREETS OF THE FAUBOURG SAINT-GERMAIN

CHAPTER XXX

THE MADELEINE AND ITS NEIGHBOURHOOD

CHAPTER XXXI

LES CHAMPS-ÉLYSÉES

CHAPTER XXXII

FAUBOURG ST-HONORÉ

CHAPTER XXXIII

PARC MONCEAU

CHAPTER XXXIV

IN THE VICINITY OF THE OPERA

CHAPTER XXXV

ON THE WAY TO MONTMARTRE

CHAPTER XXXVI

ON THE SLOPES OF THE BUTTE

CHAPTER XXXVII

THREE ANCIENT FAUBOURGS

CHAPTER XXXVIII

IN THE PARIS “EAST END”

CHAPTER XXXIX

ON TRAGIC GROUND

CHAPTER XL

LES GOBELINS

CHAPTER XLI

THE NEIGHBOURHOOD OF PORT-ROYAL

CHAPTER XLII

IN THE SOUTH-WEST

CHAPTER XLIII

IN NEWER PARIS

CHAPTER XLIV

TOWARDS THE WESTERN BOUNDARY

CHAPTER XLV

LES TERNES

CHAPTER XLVI

ON THE BUTTE

CHAPTER XLVII

AMONG THE COALYARDS AND THE MEAT-MARKETS

CHAPTER XLVIII

PÈRE-LACHAISE

CHAPTER XLIX

BOULEVARDS—QUAYS—BRIDGES

CHAPTER L

LES BOULEVARDS EXTÉRIEURS

CHAPTER LI

THE QUAYS

CHAPTER LII

LES PONTS (The Bridges)