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.

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.

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).

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.

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).

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 toitsQue 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.

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.

THREE PALACES

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.