IN THE VALLEY OF THE BIÈVRE

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

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

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

“De par le Roi, défense à DieuDe faire miracle en ce lieu.”

RUE MOUFFETARD ET ST-MÉDARD

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

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

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

Jangan Menyerah

Robert Kiyosaki mulai dari kondisi tunawisma alias tak punya rumah di tahun 1985 hingga menjadi kaya ditahun 1989 dan kemudian mencapai kebebasan finansial ditahun 1994. "Kami tidak membutuhkan uang. Kami tidak mempunyai uang ketika memulainya, dan kami punya hutang"

Sebetulnya orang yang mengatakan bahwa "butuh modal besar untuk menjadi kaya" orang tersebut adalah menipu diri dan beralasan agar tidak berusaha. Memang betul bila modal kita besar, akan lebih mudah untuk memulai usaha.

Tapi banyak orang yang kita ketahui bahwa mereka memulai usaha tanpa modal. Apple Computer dimulai dari garasi, Michael Dell dengan Dell Computer memulai dari kamar kost, Kentucky Fried Chicken (KFC) mulai dari uang pensiun yang tidak cukup.

Hati kecil kita tahu bahwa kita pernah membaca, kita pernah mendengar dan kita pernah melihat orang-orang di lingkungan kita mungkin 10 atau 20 orang yang kita ketahui menjadi kaya mulai dari NOL atau bahkan minus.

Richard Tan "Exclusive Robert Kiyosaki Asia" baru saja memenangkan penghargaan Phoenix Award yang diberikan oleh Pemerintah Singapore hanya untuk 1 orang diantara 3,5 juta penduduk Singapore yang dianggap memenuhi Legenda Burung Phoenix, yaitu bermula dari debu dan akhirnya berubah menjadi burung Phoenix nan indah.

Richard Tan sekitar tahun 1993 bangkrut, ketika usaha cairan anti slipnya dalam jangka panjang malah merusak ubin, Richard Tan bangkrut rugi US$ 600.000, digugat 20 gugatan, dan dalam kondisi seperti itu istrinya minta cerai.

Dalam kondisi jatuh tertimpa tangga dan rumahnya rubuh sekalian, masih tertimpa helikopter sekalian, Richard Tan divonis kena kanker usus. Dan akhirnya bangkit, salah satunya karena menghadiri seminarnya Robert Kiyosaki.

Dimana akhirnya Richard Tan bisa mempunyai 39 properti di Singapore dengan modal awal boleh dikata minus. Dan sekarang Richard Tan adalah salah satu pembayar pajak terbesar di Singapore. 

Semoga cerita diatas menginspirasi kita untuk terus bekerja dengan cerdas dan keras.

By Tung Desem Waringinkaos murah

LA MONTAGNE STE-GENEVIÈVE

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

ST-ÉTIENNE-DU-MONT

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

INTERIOR OF ST-ÉTIENNE-DU-MONT (JUBÉ)

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

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

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

IN THE REGION OF THE SCHOOLS

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THE SORBONNE AND ITS SURROUNDINGS

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

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

LE MUSÉE DE CLUNY

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

IN THE VICINITY OF TWO ANCIENT CHURCHES

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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

ÉGLISE ST-SÉVERIN

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

HÔTEL LOUIS XV, RUE DE LA PARCHEMINERIE

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

ST-JULIEN-LE-PAUVRE

BAS-RELIEF, RUE GALANDE

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

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

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

THE BASTILLE

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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.

LA PLACE DES VOSGES

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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 petithôtel 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 oflettres 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.

THE OLD QUARTIER ST-POL

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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.

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 oldhôtel. 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.

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.