OLD-TIME MANSIONS OF THE RIVE GAUCHE

k

ARRONDISSEMENT VII. PALAIS-BOURBON

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

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

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

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

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

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

Rue Solférino, No. 1, the chancellerie de la Légion d’Honneur (see p. 205).

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

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

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

CHAPTER XXIX

ANCIENT STREETS OF THE FAUBOURG SAINT-GERMAIN

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

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

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

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

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

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

CHAPTER XXX

THE MADELEINE AND ITS NEIGHBOURHOOD

ARRONDISSEMENT VIII. (ÉLYSÉE)

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

CHAPTER XXXI

LES CHAMPS-ÉLYSÉES

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

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

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

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

CHAPTER XXXII

FAUBOURG ST-HONORÉ

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

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

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

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

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

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

CHAPTER XXXIII

PARC MONCEAU

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

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

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

CHAPTER XXXIV

IN THE VICINITY OF THE OPERA

ARRONDISSEMENT IX. (OPÉRA)

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

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

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

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

CHAPTER XXXV

ON THE WAY TO MONTMARTRE

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

CHAPTER XXXVI

ON THE SLOPES OF THE BUTTE

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

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

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

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

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

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

CHAPTER XXXVII

THREE ANCIENT FAUBOURGS

ARRONDISSEMENT X. (ENTREPÔT)

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

CHAPTER XXXVIII

IN THE PARIS “EAST END”

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

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

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

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

CHAPTER XXXIX

ON TRAGIC GROUND

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

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

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

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

CHAPTER XL

LES GOBELINS

ARRONDISSEMENT XIII. (GOBELINS)

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

CASTEL DE LA REINE BLANCHE

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

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

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

LA SALPÉTRIÈRE

CHAPTER XLI

THE NEIGHBOURHOOD OF PORT-ROYAL

ARRONDISSEMENT XIV. (OBSERVATOIRE)

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

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

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

CHAPTER XLII

IN THE SOUTH-WEST

ARRONDISSEMENT XV. (VAUGIRARD)

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

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

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

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

CHAPTER XLIII

IN NEWER PARIS

ARRONDISSEMENT XVI. (PASSY)

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

CHAPTER XLIV

TOWARDS THE WESTERN BOUNDARY

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

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

RUE DES EAUX, PASSY

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

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

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

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

CHAPTER XLV

LES TERNES

ARRONDISSEMENT XVII. (BATIGNOLLES-MONCEAU)

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

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

CHAPTER XLVI

ON THE BUTTE

ARRONDISSEMENT XVIII. (BUTTE MONTMARTRE)

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

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

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

ST-PIERRE DE MONTMARTRE

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

VIEUX MONTMARTRE, RUE ST-VINCENT
(Maison de Henri IV)

RUE MONT-CENIS
(Chapelle de la Trinité)

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

VIEUX MONTMARTRE
(Cabaret du Lapin-Agile)

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

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

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

MOULIN DE LA GALETTE

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

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

CHAPTER XLVII

AMONG THE COALYARDS AND THE MEAT-MARKETS

ARRONDISSEMENT XIX. (BUTTES-CHAUMONT)

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

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

CHAPTER XLVIII

PÈRE-LACHAISE

ARRONDISSEMENT XX. (MÉNILMONTANT)

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

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

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

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

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

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

LE MUR DES FÉDÉRÉS

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

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

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