HISTORIC PARIS

BY THE SAME AUTHOR
THE STORY OF THE CHURCHES OF PARIS

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

The Mayflower Press, Plymouth, England. William Brendon & Son, Ltd.

TO
LA FRANCE
THE BEAUTIFUL—THE VALOROUS

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.

JETTA SOPHIA WOLFF.

CONTENTS

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.

LE VIEUX 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 LOUVRE OF TO-DAY

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.

PALAIS DES TUILERIES

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:

“Non, l’Univers ne peut rien voir d’égal.
Aux superbes dehors du Palais Cardinal.
Toute une ville entière avec pompe bâtie;
Semble d’un vieux fossé par miracle sortie.
Et nous fait présumer à ses superbes toits
Que tous ses habitants sont des Dieux ou des Rois.”

PALAIS-ROYAL

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.

L’ÉGLISE ST-GERMAIN-L’AUXERROIS

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.

PLACE ET COLONNE VENDÔME

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.

PORTAIL DE ST-EUSTACHE

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.

LA SAINTE-CHAPELLE

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.

RUE QUINCAMPOIX

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.

ST-NICOLAS-DES-CHAMPS

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

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.

LA PORTE DU TEMPLE

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.

PORTE DE CLISSON
(Archives)

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.

RUELLE DE SOURDIS

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.

HÔTEL VENDÔME, RUE BÉRANGER

Shorter interesting old streets lead out of this long one on each side.

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.

NOTRE-DAME

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!

RUE MASSILLON

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.

PLACE DE GRÈVE

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.

LA TOUR ST-JACQUES

VIEW ACROSS THE SEINE FROM PLACE DU CHÂTELET

RUE BRISEMICHE

L’ÉGLISE ST-GERVAIS

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.

HÔTEL DE BEAUVAIS, RUE FRANÇOIS-MIRON

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

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.

RUE ÉGINHARD

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.

RUE DU PRÉVÔT

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.

HÔTEL DE SENS

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 DE BIRAGUE, PLACE DES VOSGES

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

SO we come to Place de la 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.

LA BASTILLE

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 ST-SÉVERIN