CHAPTER XIII
LA PLACE DES VOSGES
HERE we are on the old Place Royale—the place where royalties dwelt and courtiers disported in the days of Louis XIII, whose statue we see still in the centre of the big, dreary garden square. That statue was put there by Napoléon to replace the original one, carted away and melted down in Revolutionary days when the ci-devant Place Royale became Place des Fédérés, then Place de l’Indivisibilité. Napoléon first named it Place des Vosges, a name confirmed after 1870 as a tribute of gratitude to the department which had first paid up its share of the war contribution. In the early centuries of the Bourbon kings the palace of the Tournelles had stood here (see p. 8). After its demolition the site was taken for a horse market, and there the famous duel was fought between the mignons of Henri II and the followers of the duc de Guise. Henri IV created the Place and had it parcelled out for building purposes. His idea was to make it the centre of a number of streets or avenues each bearing the name of one of the provinces of France. The King died and that project was not carried out, but the extensive site was soon the square of the fine mansions we see to-day, mansions fallen from their high estate, no longer the private abodes of the world of fashion, but standing unchanged in outward aspect.
We see the Pavillon du Roi on the south side facing Rue de Birague, once Rue du Pavillon du Roi, where at No. 11 was born Mme de Sévigné (1626); opposite it the Pavillon de la Reine. At No. 7 the petit hôtel Sully connected with the grand hôtel Sully of the Rue St-Antoine. Each house of the place was inhabited and known by the name of a great noble or a wealthy financier. Their enumeration would take too much space here. At No. 6 we see the house where Victor Hugo lived in more modern times—1833-48—now the Musée filled with souvenirs of his life and work and dedicated to his memory. Behind it, at the corner of Impasse Guénémée, is the hôtel once the dwelling of Marion Delorme. Théophile Gautier, and later Alphonse Daudet occupied a flat at No. 8. Passing out of the place through Rue du Pas de la Mule, in its day “petite Rue Royale,” we turn into Rue St-Antoine, where modern buildings are almost unknown, and vestiges of bygone ages are seen on every side. At No. 5 an inscription tells us this was the site of the courtyard of the Bastille through which the populace rushed in attack on the 14th July, 1789. At No. 7 we remark an ancient sign “A la Renommée de la Friture.” At No. 17 we see what remains of the convent built by Mansart in 1632, on the site of the hôtel de Cossé, where for eighteen years St. Vincent de Paul was confessor. The chapel, left intact, was given to the Protestants in 1802. Here Fouquet and his son, Mme de Chantal, and the Marquis de Sévigné were buried. No. 20 is l’hôtel de Mayenne et d’Ormesson, sixteenth or seventeenth century, on the site of an older hôtel sold to Charles V to enlarge his palace St-Pol. It passed through many hands, royal hands for the most part, and the building as we see it, or the previous structure, was for a time the hôtel de Diane de Poitiers. In modern times it became the Pension Favart, then in 1870, l’École des Francs-Bourgeois under the direction of les Frères de la doctrine chrétienne. At No. 28 Impasse Guénémée, known in its fifteenth-century days as Cul-de-Sac du Ha! Ha! a passage connected with the hôtel Rohan-Guénémée in Place Royale. In the seventeenth century a convent was built here, a sort of reformatory for erring girls and women of the upper classes who were shut up here in consequence of lettres de cachet. At No. 62 stands the hôtel de Sully. Its first owner staked the mansion at the gambling table and lost. At No. 101 we are before the Lycée Charlemagne, built in 1804 on the site of two ancient mansions and of the old city wall, of which some traces still remain. At No. 133 we see the Maison Séguier, with its fine old door, balcony and staircase; another old house at No. 137; then this ancient thoroughfare becomes in these modern days, Rue François-Miron (see p. 104).
RUE DE BIRAGUE, PLACE DES VOSGES
Rue des Tournelles in this earlier part of its course is chiefly interesting for the fine hôtel at No. 28, built in 1690, decorated with frescoes by Lebrun and Mignard, where the famous courtesan, Ninon de Lenclos, lived and died.
CHAPTER XIV
THE BASTILLE
SO we come to Place de la Bastille.
The famous prison which stood there from the end of the fourteenth century to the memorable summer of 1789, was built by Hugues Aubriot, Prévôt du Roi, as a fortified castle to protect the palais St-Pol close by, and Paris in general, against hostile inroads from the country beyond. Its form is well known. A perfect model of it is to be seen at Carnavalet, in that most interesting salle—the Bastille-room. It had eight towers each 23 mètres high, each with its distinct name and use. White lines in the pavement of the place show where some of its walls, some of its towers rose, houses stand upon the site of others. The great military citadel became a regular prison in the time of Charles VI—a military prison, though civilians were from the first shut up there from time to time. Aubriot himself was put there by the mob, to be quickly released by the King. Under Richelieu it became a State prison, the prison of lettres de cachet notoriety. The Revolutionists attacked it in the idea that untold harshness, cruelty, injustice dominated there. As a matter of fact, the Bastille was for years rather a luxurious place of retirement for persons who themselves wished or were desired by others to lie low for a time, than a fort of durance vile. The last governor, M. de Launay, in particular, was generous and kind even to the humblest of those placed beneath his rule. And we know the attacking mob found seven prisoners only—two madmen, the others acknowledged criminals. M. de Launay was massacred nevertheless. The Revolutionists seized all the arms they could find, a goodly store; the walls were razed soon afterwards and a board put up with the words “Ici on dance.” In reality the attack upon the Bastille was a milder under-taking than is generally supposed, and its entire destruction took place later on in quite a business-like way by a contractor.
The place was finished in 1803. The Colonne de Juillet we see there dates from 1831. The bones of the victims of the two minor Revolutions (1830-48) are beneath it. Louis Philippe’s throne was burnt before it in 1848.
CHAPTER XV
IN THE VICINITY OF TWO ANCIENT CHURCHES
ARRONDISSEMENT V. PANTHÉON. RIVE GAUCHE (LEFT BANK)
CROSSING the Seine by the Pont St-Michel we reach Place St-Michel, of which we will speak in another chapter, as it lies chiefly in arrondissement VI. Turning to the east, we come upon two of the oldest and most interesting of Paris churches and a very network of ancient streets, sordid enough some of them, but emphatically characteristic. Rue de la Huchette dates from the twelfth century; there in olden days two very opposite classes plied their trade:—the rotisseurs—turnspits, and the diamond cutters. The old street is still of some renown in the district for good cooking in the few restaurants of a humble order that remain. The erewhile Bouillon de la Huchette is now a bal. Once upon a time Ambassadors dined at l’hôtellerie de l’Ange in this old street. And the name “Le Petit Caporal” tells its own tale. There Buonaparte, friendless and penniless, lodged in the street’s decadent days. Rue Zacharie, dark and narrow between its tall old houses, dates back to the twelfth or early thirteenth century. Rue du Chat qui Pêche, less ancient (sixteenth century), is a mere pathway between high walls. From Rue Zacharie we turn into Rue St-Séverin, one of the most ancient of ancient streets. Many traces of past ages still remain despite the demolition of old houses around the beautiful old church we see before us, and subterranean passages run beneath the soil. At No. 26 and again at No. 4 we see the name of the street, the word Saint obliterated by the Revolutionists. The church porch gives on Rue de Prêtres-St-Séverin—thirteenth century. It was brought here from the thirteenth-century church St-Pierre-aux-Bœufs, razed in 1837. Till then the entrance had been the old door, Rue St-Séverin, where we see still the words, half effaced: “Bonne gens, qui par cy passées, priez Dieu pour les trepassés,” and the figures of two lions, once on the church steps, where the Clergy of the parish were wont of yore to administer justice: hence the phrase “Datum inter leones.” The church was built in the twelfth century, on the site of a chapel erected in the days of Childebert, over the tomb of Séverin, the hermit. Thrice restored, partially rebuilt, the beautiful edifice shows Gothic architecture in its three stages: primitive: porch, side door, three bays; rayonnant: the tower and part of the nave and side aisle; flamboyant: chancel and the splendid apse. Glorious stained glass, beautiful frescoes—modern, the work of Flandrin, fine statues surround us here. A striking feature is the host of votive offerings, some a mere slab a few inches in size with the simple word “Merci” and a date. Many refer to the successful passing of examinations, for we are in the vicinity of the University. The presbytery and its garden cover what was once the graveyard. Some of the old charniers still remain.
Rue de la Parcheminerie (thirteenth century), in part demolished recently, in its early days Rue des Escrivains, was for long the exclusive habitation of whoever had to do with the making and selling of books. The “hôtel des Pères Tranquilles” once there has gone. Two old houses, Nos. 6 and 7, were in the thirteenth-century dependencies of Norwich Cathedral for English student-monks. In Rue Boutebrie, one side entirely rebuilt of late, dwelt the illuminators of sixteenth-century scrolls and books. We see a characteristic ancient gable at No. 6. This house and No. 8 have ancient staircases. Crossing Rue St-Jacques we turn into Rue St-Julien-le-Pauvre, “le Vieux Chemin” of past times. Through the old arched doorway we see there, surmounted by a figure of Justice, was the abode of a notable eighteenth-century Governor of the Petit-Châtelet, whose duty was that of hearing both sides in student quarrels and pronouncing judgment. The church we see was the University church of the twelfth and several succeeding centuries. University meetings were held there and many a town and gown riot, or a merely gown riot, took place within its walls. The slab above the old door tells of its cession to the administrators of the hôtel-Dieu in 1655. Some of its stones date from the ninth or, maybe, from an even earlier century; for the church before us was a rebuilding in the twelfth of one erected in the ninth century to replace the hostel and chapel built there in the sixth century and overthrown by the Normans—the hostel where Gregory of Tours had made a stay. The ancient Gothic portal and two bays falling to decay were lopped off in 1560. The well we see in the courtyard was once within the church walls. Another well of miracle-working fame, on the north side, had a conduit to the altar. Passing through a door near the vestry we find ourselves on the site of the ancient annexe of the hôtel-Dieu, razed a few years ago, and see on one side the chevet of the church with its quaint belfry and flight of steps on the roof, on the other a high, strong, moss-grown wall said to be a remnant of the boundary wall of Philippe-Auguste. In 1802 the church was given to the Greek Catholics of Paris—Melchites. The iconostase, therefore, very beautiful, is an important feature. We see some very ancient statues, and a more modern one of Montyon, founder of the Virtue-prizes bestowed annually by the Académie Française.
HÔTEL LOUIS XV, RUE DE LA PARCHEMINERIE
In Rue Galande, what remains of it, we see several interesting old houses, and on the door of No. 42 a bas-relief showing St. Julien in a ship. Rue du Fouarre, one side gone save for a single house, once Rue des Escholiers, recalls the decree of Pope Urban V that students of the Schools must hear lectures humbly sitting on the ground on bundles of straw which they were bound themselves to provide. Benches were too luxurious for the students of those days. In this street of the “Écoles des Quatre Nations,” France, Normandie, Alsace, Picardie, Dante listened to the instruction of Brunetto Latini. No. 8 with its old door is on the site of the “École de Normandie.” The street close by, named in memory of the great Italian poet, is modern. In Rue Domat stood, till the nineteenth century, the walls of the suppressed convent de Cornouailles founded by a Breton in 1317. Rue des Anglais, the resort of English students from the time of Philippe-Auguste, was famous till recent days for the Cabaret du Père Lunette, about to be razed. The first Père Lunette went about his business wearing enormous spectacles. The second landlord of the inn, gaining possession of its founder’s “specs,” wore them as a badge, slung across his chest. Rue de l’hôtel Colbert has no reference to the statesman. In early times it was Rue des Rats. Rue des Trois-Portes recalls the thirteenth-century days when three houses only formed the street. No. 10, connected with No. 13 Rue de la Bûcherie, the log-selling street, shows us the ancient “Faculté de Médicine,” surrounded in past days by the garden, the first of the kind, where medical men and medical students cultivated the herbs necessary for their physic. The interesting old Gothic structure, more than once threatened with demolition, has been classed as an historical monument, under State care therefore, and reconstructed as the Maison des Étudiants. The students were very keen about the completion of their new house on its time-honoured site, and when the masons in course of reconstruction went on strike, the young men threw aside their books, donned a workman’s jacket, or failing that doffed their coats and rolled up their shirt-sleeves and set to work with all youth’s ardour as bricklayers. Their zeal was greater, however, than their technical knowledge or their physical fitness, and their work left much to be desired, as the French say. Then fortunately the strike ended.
Place Maubert, named after the second vicar of Ste-Geneviève, M. Aubert, was the great meeting-place of students, and here Maître Albert, the distinguished Dominican professor, surnamed “le Grand,” his name recorded by a neighbouring street, gave his lectures in the open air. Executions also took place here. In Impasse Maubert dwelt Ste-Croix, the lover and accomplice of the poisoner Mme de Brinvilliers, and in Rue des Grand Degrés Voltaire in his youth worked in a lawyer’s office. The cellars of Rue Maître-Albert are said to have been prison cells; at No. 13 the negro page Zamor, whose denunciation led Mme Dubarry to the scaffold, died in misery in 1820. No. 16 was the meeting-place of the Communards in 1871.
Rue de la Bièvre reminds us that the tributary of the Seine, now a turgid drain, closely covered, once joined the mother-river here. Tradition says Dante made his abode here while in Paris. Over the door of No. 12 we see a statue of St-Michel slaying the dragon. This was originally a college founded in his own house in 1348 by Guillaume de Chanac, bishop of Paris, for twelve poor scholars of the diocese of Limoges.
In Rue des Bernardins we see the church St-Nicolas-du-Chardonnet, St-Nicolas of the Thistle-field, built in the seventeenth century upon the site of a thirteenth-century structure erected where till then thistles had run riot. It was designed by a parishioner of mark, the painter Lebrun, enriched by his paintings and those of other artists of note. The tomb of his mother is within its walls and a monument to his memory by Coysevox. Rue St-Victor recalls the abbey, once on the site where now we see the Halle-aux-Vins. There Maurice de Sulli, builder of Notre-Dame, died and was buried in 1196. Hither, to its famous school, came Abelard, St. Thomas à Becket, St. Bernard. It was razed to the ground in 1809. At Nos. 24-26 we saw till just recently the ancient seminary of St-Nicolas, closed since 1906, with its long rows of old-world windows, seventy-two panes on one story; the college buildings were at the corner of Rue Pontoise, a street opened in 1772 as a calf-market and named from the town noted for its excellent veal. And here we find at No. 19 vestiges of the ancient convent of the Bernardins. Rue de Poissy has more important remains of the convent and of its college, founded in 1245 by the English Abbé de Clairvaux, Stephen Lexington, aided by a brother of St. Louis. The grand old walls now serve as the Caserne des Pompiers—the Fire Station. Within we find beautiful old-time Gothic work, a fine staircase, arched naves, tall, slender pillars—the refectory of the monks of yore; and beneath it vaulted cellars with some seventy pillars and ancient bays.
CHAPTER XVI
IN THE REGION OF THE SCHOOLS
THE SORBONNE AND ITS SURROUNDINGS
WHEN St. Louis was on the throne of France the physician attendant upon his mother, la Reine Blanche, died bequeathing a sum of money for the institution of a college of theology. In consequence thereof Robert de Sorbon built the school for theological study, a very simple erection then, which developed into the great college adapted to studies of the most varied character, known as the Sorbonne: that was in the year 1253. Two hundred years later the first printing press in France was set up there. In another nigh upon two hundred years Richelieu, elected Grand Master of the college, built its church and rebuilt the surrounding structure. Napoléon set the college in action on a vaster scale, after its suppression at the Revolution, by making it the seat of the Académie de Paris, the “home” of the Faculties of Letters and Science, as well as of Theology. But the edifice was then again crumbling—in need of rebuilding. Time passed, ruin made headway. Plans were made, and in 1853 the first stone of a new structure was laid. It remained a first stone and a last one for many years. The modern walls we see were not built till the close of the nineteenth century, finished in 1901. In the great courtyard white lines mark the site of Richelieu’s edifice. The vast building is richly decorated with statuary and frescoes. In its church Richelieu seems still to hold sway. We see his coat-of-arms on every side; over his tomb, the work of Girardon, hangs his Cardinal’s hat. Another handsome monument covers the tomb of his descendant, the minister of Louis XVIII. Many generations of Richelieu lie in the vault beneath the chapel floor. The church is dismantled and partially secularized. Grand classic concerts are held there during the Sundays of term each year, but the Richelieu have still the right to be baptized, married, buried there; the altar therefore has not been undraped.
Exactly opposite the Sorbonne, on its Rue des Écoles side, is the beautiful Musée de Cluny, on the site of the ancient Palais des Thermes of which the ruins are seen in the grounds bordered by the boulevard St-Germain. The palace dates from Roman days. Julian was proclaimed Emperor there. We see an altar from the time of Tiberius. The remains of Roman baths—vestiges of the frigidarium, the tepidarium, the hypocaustum, traces of the pipes through which the water flowed are still there. In the fourteenth century Pierre de Chaslun, Abbot of Cluny, bought the ruins of the ancient palace, and the exquisite Gothic mansion we see was built close up against them. Many illustrious persons found shelter within the home of the Abbots during the centuries that followed. James V of Scotland stayed there. Men of learning were made welcome there. In later times its tower was used as an observatory. The Revolution put an end to the state and prestige of the beautiful mansion. It was sold, parcelled out to a number of buyers, put to all sorts of common and commercial uses, till, in 1833, M. de Sommerard, whose name is given to the street on its northern side, acquired it and set up there his own precious collection of things beautiful, the nucleus of the Museum. The whole property was taken over later by the Beaux-Arts under State protection for conservation. In the garden numerous interesting relics of ancient churches, that of St-Benoît which once stood near, and others, are carefully preserved.
Rue Jean-de-Beauvais was in bygone days inhabited entirely by printers. The Roumanian chapel there was the chapel of the famous College Dormans-Beauvais, founded in 1370. Rue de Latran—modern—runs across the site of the ancient commanderie of the Knights of St. John of Jerusalem.
In Rue des Carmes, dating from 1250, we see at No. 15 the ancient College des Lombards, now the Cercle Catholique d’Ouvriers, founded 1334, rebuilt under Louis XIV by two Irish priests. The little chapel there, dedicated now to “Jesus Ouvrier,” is paved with the gravestones of the Irish clergy who came of yore to live and study there.
Rue Basse des Carmes stretches across the site of the demolished Carmelite Convent. We are close now to the Collège de France, le Lycée Louis-le-Grand and l’École Polytechnique.
Le Collège de France, Rue des Écoles, its beautiful west façade giving on Rue St-Jacques, was founded as an institution by François I (1530); its lectures were to be given in different colleges. The edifice before us replaces this “Collège Royal,” built in the early years of the seventeenth century, destroyed in the eighteenth century. It dates from 1778, the work of Chalgrin. Additions were made in the nineteenth century. The numerous finely executed busts of noted scholars and eminent professors are the work of the best sculptors of each period.
The Lycée Louis-le-Grand, Rue St-Jacques, on the site of four colleges of bygone ages, dates in its foundation from 1550, rebuilt 1814-20, restored 1861-85. In the court we see some of the ancient walls. It has borne different names characteristic of the different periods of the history of France. It began as the Collège de Clermont, from its founder, the bishop; in 1682 it took the name of the King, Louis-le-Grand. In 1792 it became Collège de l’Égalité; in 1800, Le Pyrtanée; Lycée Imperial in 1802; Collège Royal-Louis-le-Grand in 1814; Lycée Descartes in 1848, to revert to its present designation in 1849. Many of the most eminent men of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries were pupils there.
The Collège Ste-Barbe built in the sixteenth century was added to Louis-le-Grand in 1764. Its tower goes by the name Tour Calvin, for this was the Huguenot quarter. Here many of the persecuted Protestants were in hiding at the Massacre of St. Bartholomew. Yet it was at Ste-Barbe that Ignatius Loyola was educated.
Close around Lycée Louis-le-Grand and the Collège de France, we find a number of twelfth-and thirteenth-century streets condemned to demolition, some of their houses already razed, those that remain showing many interesting relics. Rue du Cimetière-St-Benoît, which bordered the cemetery erewhile there; Rue Fromantel, the name a corruption of froid mantel, or manteau, with its interesting old-world dwellings; Impasse Chartrière, where at No. 2 we see an old sign and a niche of the time of Henri IV, who was wont to visit his “belle Gabrielle” here. No. 11 was, it is said, the entrance to the King’s stables. At the junction of Rue Lanneau four streets form the quadrangle where was erewhile the well “Certain,” so named after the vicar of the old church St-Hilaire, once close by, discovered beneath the roadway in 1894. Roman remains of great interest were found at that time below the surface of all these streets. Rue Valette, eleventh century, was once Rue des Sept Voies, for seven thoroughfares met there. At No. 2, in the billiard-room of the old inn, we find vestiges of the church St-Hilaire, once there. No. 19 dates from the fourteenth century, and in the seventeenth century was a meeting-place of the Huguenots who hid in its Gothic two-storied cellars. In Rue Laplace lived Jean de Meung, author of Le Roman de la Rose. At No. 12 we see the entrance of a vanished college, next door to which was the Collège des Écossais.
L’École Polytechnique stands on the site of the college founded in 1304 by Jeanne de Navarre, wife of Philippe le Bel, for seventy poor scholars. It was rebuilt in the fifteenth century. The last vestiges of that rebuilding, a beautiful Gothic chapel, were swept away in 1875. Traces of a Roman cemetery were found in 1906. The present structure dates from the eighteenth century, the work of Gabriel. The house of the Général-Commandant is the ancient Collège de Boncourt, founded in 1357.
In Rue Clovis, at the summit of the Montagne Ste-Geneviève stands the Lycée Henri IV, dating as a school from 1796, known for several subsequent years as Lycée-Napoléon. It recalls vividly the abbey which once stood there. Its tower, known as the “Tour de Clovis,” rises from the foundations of the eleventh-century abbey tower and was for long used as the Paris Observatory. The college kitchen is one of the ancient abbey cellars—cellars in three stories. Some of the walls before us date from the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries. The library founded by Cardinal de la Rochefoucauld is the boys’ dormitory. A cloister and seventeenth-century refectory are there intact. The pupils go up and down a fine eighteenth-century staircase, and study amid interesting frescoes and much beautiful woodwork. New buildings were added to the ancient ones in 1873.
CHAPTER XVII
LA MONTAGNE STE-GENEVIÈVE
RUE DE LA MONTAGNE STE-GENEVIÈVE, leading to the hill-top from Boulevard St-Germain, went in twelfth-century days by the unæsthetic name Rue des Boucheries. Nearly every wall, every stone is ancient. In past ages three colleges at different positions stood on its incline. The sign at No. 40 dates from the time of the Directoire. A statuette of the saint there in Revolution days was labelled, “A la ci-devant Geneviève; Rendez-vous des Sans-Culottes.” And now we have before us the beautiful old church St-Etienne-du-Mont. The place, in very early times a graveyard, was laid out as a square in the fourteenth century and the church burial ground was on the north-western side. The present church dates as a whole from the early years of the seventeenth century, built on the site of a thirteenth-century chapel dedicated to St-Etienne. The abside and the choir were built in early sixteenth-century years, close up against the old basilic of the abbey Ste-Geneviève. Among the people the church is still often referred to as l’Église Ste-Geneviève, chiefly, no doubt, because the tomb of the patron saint of Paris is there. The original châsse—a richly jewel-studded shrine—was destroyed at the Revolution, melted down, its gems confiscated, the bones of the Saint burnt. The stone coffin cast aside as valueless was recovered, filled with such relics of Ste-Geneviève as could be collected from far and near, and is now in the sumptuous shrine to which pilgrimages are continually made. A smaller châsse is solemnly carried round the aisles of the church each year during the “neuvaine” following January 3rd, the revered Saint’s fête day, when services are held all day long, while on the place without a religious fair goes on ... souvenirs of Ste-Geneviève and objects of piety of every description are offered for sale on the stalls set up upon the place from end to end. The church, showing three distinct styles of architecture, Romanesque, Gothic, Renaissance, is especially remarkable for its rood-screen—the only one left in a Paris church. It is rich, too, in exquisite stained glass, beautiful woodwork, fine statuary. We see inscriptions and epitaphs referring to Pascal, Rollin and many other men of note, buried in the church crypt or in the graveyard of past days.
The Panthéon, the most conspicuous if not the most ancient or most seductive building of this hill-top, was begun as a new church Ste-Geneviève. Louis XV, lying dangerously ill at Metz, made a vow to build on his recovery a church dedicated to the patron saint of Paris. It was not begun till 1755, not solidly constructed then; slips followed the erection of its walls, threatening collapse, and Soufflot, the architect, died of grief thereat. The catastrophe feared did not happen; the building was consolidated. Instead, however, of remaining a church it was declared, in the Revolutionary year 1791, the Panthéon, with the inscription, “Aux Grands Hommes de France, la Patrie reconnaissante.” Napoléon restored it to the ecclesiastical authorities at the Concordat. In 1830 it became again the Panthéon; was once more a church in 1851—then the Panthéon for good—so far—in 1885, when the body of Victor Hugo was carried there in great state. Its façade is copied from the Panthéon of Agrippa at Rome. It is noted for its frescoes illustrative of the life of Ste-Geneviève, by Gros, Chavannes, Laurens and other nineteenth-century artists. Rodin’s “Penseur” below the peristyle was put there in 1906.
INTERIOR OF ST-ÉTIENNE-DU-MONT (JUBÉ)
The Faculté de Droit, No. 10, is Soufflot’s work (1772-1823). The Bibliothèque Ste-Geneviève, quite modern (1884), covers the site of the demolished Collège Montaigu, founded in 1314. Ignatius Loyola, Erasmus and Calvin were pupils there. All the surrounding streets stretch along the site of ancient buildings, convents, monasteries, etc., swept away but leaving here and there interesting traces. In Rue Lhomond débris of the potteries once there have been unearthed. Michelet lived for a time at the ancient hôtel de Flavacourt. No. 10, incorporated later in the École Ste-Geneviève, of which the chief entrance door is a vestige of the hôtel de Juigné, was the private abode of the Archbishop of Paris in pre-Revolution days. Another part of the school was the home of Abbé Edgeworth, confessor to Louis XVI in his last days. Yet another was the Séminaire des Anglais, founded under Louis XIV. We find a fine façade and balconies in the courtyard at No. 29, once the abode of a religious community, now the lay “Institution Lhomond.”
The Séminaire des Missions des Colonies Françaises at No. 30 dates from the time of Louis XIV. Fine staircase and chapel. The cellars of the modern houses from No. 48 to No. 54 are those of the convent which erewhile stood above them.
In Rue des Irlandais we see the college founded in 1755 for Irish, Scottish and English priest-students. In Rue Rataud, once Rue des Vignes, which led to a cemetery for persons who had died of the plague, is, at No. 3, the orphanage of l’Enfant Jésus, formerly “Les Cent Filles,” where the duchesse d’Angoulême, daughter of Louis XVI, had fifty young orphan girls educated yearly at her own expense.
CHAPTER XVIII
IN THE VALLEY OF THE BIÈVRE
EMPHATICALLY a street of the past is the old Rue Mouffetard, its name a corruption perhaps of Mont Cérarius, the name of the district under the Romans, or derived maybe from the old word mouffettes, referring to the exhalations of the Bièvre, flowing now below ground here, never very odorous since the days when, coming sweet and clear from the southern slopes, it was put to city uses, industrial and other, on entering Paris. Every house along the course of this street has some curious old-time feature, an ancient sign, an old well, old doors, old courtyards. Quaint old streets lead out of it. The market on the place by the old church St-Médard extends up its slope.
In the sordid shops which flourish on the ground-floor of almost every house, or on stalls set on the threshold, one sees an assortment of foodstuffs rarely brought together in any other corner of the city, and articles of clothing of most varied kind and style and date.
The church dating from the twelfth century, partially rebuilt and restored in later times, was for several centuries a dependency of the abbey Ste-Geneviève. Its graveyard, for long past a market-place and a square, was in the eighteenth century the scene of the notorious scandale Médard. Among the graves of noted Jansenists buried there miraculous cures were supposed to take place. Women and girls fell into ecstasies. The number of these convulsionists grew daily. At last the King, Louis XV, ordered the cemetery to be closed. A witty inhabitant of the district managed to get near one of the tombstones the morning after the King’s command was made known and wrote thereon:
De faire miracle en ce lieu.”
It is the parish of the Gobelins and a beautiful piece of Gobelins tapestry hangs over the vestry door. Fragments of ancient glass, a picture by Watteau, others by Philippe de Champaigne, beautiful woodwork and the quaintness of its architecture make the old church intensely interesting.
At No. 81 of this old-time street we find vestiges of a seventeenth-century chapel. At No. 52 ancient gravestones. The fountain at No. 60 dates from 1671. The house No. 9 is on the site of the Porte Marcel of bygone days.
Rue Broca, in the vicinity of St-Médard, dating from the twelfth century, when it was Rue de Lourcine, has many curious old houses. The houses of Rue du Pôt-de-fer are all ancient, as are most of those in Rue St-Médard. At No. 1 of Place de la Contre Scarpe close by, a modern place, an inscription marks the site of the Cabaret de la “Pomme de Pin,” celebrated by the eulogies of Ronsard and Rabelais.
CHAPTER XIX
RUE ST-JACQUES
PASSING amid the ancient colleges and churches, streets and houses we have been visiting, runs the old Rue St-Jacques. It begins at the banks of the Seine, stretches through the whole arrondissement, to become on leaving it a faubourg.
The line it follows was in a long-past age the Roman road from Lutetia to Orléans—the Via Superior—la grande rue—of early Paris history. Along its course in Roman times the Aqueduc d’Arcueil brought water from Rungis to the Palace of the Thermes (see p. 138). It is from end to end a long line of old-time buildings or vestiges of those swept away. The famous couvent des Jacobins extended across the site of the Bibliothèque de l’École de Droit and adjacent structures. At No. 172 stood the Porte St-Jacques in Philippe-Auguste’s great wall.
We see a fine old door at No. 5, a house with two-storied cellars. At a house on the site of No. 218 Jean de Meung wrote the Roman de la Rose. The famous poem was published lower down in the same street.
The church St-Jacques-du-Haut-Pas stands on the high ground we reach at No. 252, a seventeenth-century structure on the site of a chapel built in the fourteenth century by the monks from Italy known as the Pontifici, makers of bridges constructed to give pilgrims the means of crossing a mau pas or mauvais pas, i.e. a dangerous or difficult passage in rivers or roads. The beautiful woodwork within the church—that of the organ and pulpit—was brought here from the ancient, demolished church St-Benoît (see p. 140). We notice several good pictures. The fine stained glass once here was all smashed at the Revolution. The hôpital Cochin memorizes in the name of its founder an eighteenth-century vicar there. The churchyard was where Rue de l’Abbé-de-l’Épée now runs, known at one time as Ruelle du Cimetière-St-Jacques.
No. 254 bis, the national Deaf and Dumb Institution, is the ancient commanderie of the Frères hospitaliers de St-Jacques-du-Haut-Pas—the Pontifici—given for the purpose in 1790, partly rebuilt in 1823. The statue of Abbé de l’Épée, inventor of the alphabet for the deaf and dumb, in the court is the work of a deaf and dumb sculptor. The trunk of the tree we see near it is said to be that of an elm planted there by Sully three hundred years ago. At No. 262 we see vestiges of a vacherie, once the farm St-Jacques. At No. 261 we may turn into Rue des Feuillantines, where at No. 10 we see vestiges of the convent that was at one time in part the abode of George Sand, then of Mme Hugo, mother of the poet, and her children; later Jules Sardou lived in the impasse, now merged in the rue. At No. 269 we find some walls of the monastery founded by English Benedictines in 1640, to which a few years later they added a chapel dedicated to St. Edmond. The fabric is still the property of English bishops. It is used as a great music school: “Maison de la Schola Cantorum.” The door seen between two fine old pillars at No. 284 led in olden days to the Carmelite convent where Louise de la Vallière took definite refuge and acted as “sacristan” till her death; Rue du Val-de-Grâce runs where the convent stood.[D]
The military hospital Val-de-Grâce was founded as a convent early in the seventeenth century. Anne d’Autriche installed there the impoverished Benedictines of Val Parfond, or Profond, evacuated from their quarters hard by owing to an inundation from the Bièvre. In their gratitude they changed their name: the nuns of Val Profond became sisters of Val-de-Grâce. In 1645 Louis XIV, the child Anne d’Autriche had so ardently prayed for laid the first stone of the chapel dome, built on the model of St. Peter’s at Rome. The church is now used only for funerals and indispensable military services. The dependency of Val-de-Grâce was built by Catherine de’ Medici, the catacombs lie below it and the surrounding houses.
CHAPTER XX
LE JARDIN DES PLANTES
IT was in the early years of the seventeenth century that the King’s physician bought a piece of waste ground—a butte formed of the refuse of centuries accumulated there—for the culture of the multitudinous herbs and plants which made up the pharmacopia of the age. Thus was born the “Jardin Royal de herbes médicinales” laid out in 1626. Chairs of botany, pharmacy, surgery were instituted and endowed, and in 1650 the garden was thrown open to the public. A century later Buffon was named superintendent of the royal garden. He set himself to reorganize and enlarge. The amphitheatre, the natural history galleries, the chemistry laboratories, the fine lime-tree avenue are all due to him. Distinguished naturalists succeeded one another as directors of the garden, and after the death of Louis XVI a museum of natural history and a menagerie were set up with what was left of the King’s collection at Versailles. Additions and improvements were made in succeeding years till, after the outbreak of war in 1870, the Jardin was bombarded by the Prussians, and during the siege its live-stock largely drawn upon to feed the population of Paris. The garden and its buildings have been added to frequently. The labyrinth is on the site of the hillock bought by Guy de la Brosse, who first laid it out. A granite statue marks the spot where he and two notable travellers were buried. Surrounding streets record the names of great naturalists of different epochs.
In Rue Geoffroy St-Hilaire, once Rue Jardin du Roi, No. 5, now the Police Station, was built in 1760. At No. 30 a wheel once worked turned by the water of the Bièvre, now a malodorous drain-stream hidden beneath the pavement. No. 36 was Buffon’s home. Here he died in 1788. At No. 37 lived Daubenton. At No. 38 stood in olden days the great gate, the Porte-Royale, of the Jardin du Roi, with to its left the hall, a narrow space at that time, where the great surgeon Dionis described to a marvelling assembly of students his wonderful discoveries (1672-73). That small cabinet was the nucleus of the great anthropological museum of succeeding centuries.
In Rue Cuvier, in its early days Rue Derrière-les-Murs de Ste-Victoire, describing accurately its situation, we see at No. 20 a modern fountain (1840) on the site of one put there in 1671 and traces of the abbey St-Victor in the courtyard. The pavilion “de l’Administration” of the Garden is the ancient hôtel Jean Debray (1650), inhabited subsequently by several men of note. At No. 47 Cuvier died in 1832. In the eighteenth-century fiacres, a recently introduced manner of getting about, were to be hired at No. 45. The eleventh-century Rue Linné shows many vestiges of the past. We see Gothic arches of the vanished abbey at No. 4.
In Rue des Fossés St-Bernard, stretching along the line of Philippe-Auguste’s wall, between the site of two great gates: Porte St-Victor, a spot desecrated by the massacres of September, and Porte St-Bernard, we see Halle-aux-Vins, where abbey buildings stood of yore. The Halle-aux-Cuirs, in Rue Censier, is on the site of the famous orphanage “La Miséricorde,” called vulgarly “les Cent Filles” or “les Cent Vierges.” The apprentice from the Arts and Crafts Institution, who should choose one of these orphan maidens for his wife, obtained as her dowry the privilege of becoming at once a full member of the Corporation.
In Rue de la Clef we have at No. 56 the site of part of the notorious prison Ste-Pélagie. No. 26 is still owned by the Savouré, whose ancestors kept the school where Jerôme Bonaparte and many of his compeers were educated. Rue du Fer-à-Moulin, dating from the twelfth century, a stretch of blackened walls, has been known by many names. In the little Rue Scipion leading out of it we see at No. 13 the hôtel built in the sixteenth century for the Tuscan, Scipion Sardini, who came to France in the suite of Catherine de’ Medici, a rich and rather scandalous financier; terra-cotta medallions ornament its walls. It serves now as the bakehouse of the Paris hospitals. In the square opposite we see the curious piece of statuary: “des Boulangers,” by Charpentier.
Rue Monge, running from boulevard St-Germain to Avenue des Gobelins, was cut through old streets of the district in 1859. A fountain Louis XV brought here from its original site, Rue Childebert, was set up in the square, and many other old-time relics: statues from the ancient hôtel de Ville, débris from the Palais de l’Industrie, burnt down in 1897; a copy of the statue of Voltaire by Houdin, etc.
Rue d’Arras, so named from a college once there, began as Rue des Murs, referring to the walls of Philippe-Auguste. The concert hall we see was not long ago Père Loyson’s church. L’École Communale, No. 19 Rue des Boulangers, is on the site of part of the convent des “Filles Anglaises,” which had existed there from 1644—razed in 1861.
Rue Rollin began in the sixteenth century as Rue des Moulins-à-vent. On the site of the house at No. 2 Pascal died in 1662. No. 4, with its fine staircase, its grille and ancient well in the courtyard, was the home of Bernardine de St. Pierre, during the years he wrote his world-known Paul and Virginie. Rollin lived and died (1741) at No. 8. Descartes lived at No. 14. When the street was longer and known as Rue Neuve-St-Etienne, Manon Philipon, Madame Roland of later days, was a pupil in the annexe of the English Augustine convent on a site crossed now by Rue Monge and Rue de Navarre.
In Rue de Navarre we come to Les Arènes, the disinterred remains of the Roman Arena. They were discovered here just before the war of 1870, then quickly covered up to be in part restored to daylight in 1883. We see before us the grey stones, huge blocks and graduated step-like seats where the population of the city—Lutetians then—passed their hours of recreation watching the conflicts of wild beasts. It is not, perhaps, the original arena built here by the Romans, for that was attacked twice, first by the northern invaders, then by the Christians, many of its stones used to build the city walls. It was, however, soon restored ... evidently. In the course of subsequent invasions, conquests, new settlements, constructions and the lapse of years, the Roman theatre sank beneath the surface to be unearthed in nineteenth-century days. Modern garden paths and a grand but inharmonious entrance in Louis XIV style now surround this supremely interesting vestige of a long-gone age. Children play where savage beasts once fought. Women knit and sew, old men rest, young men and maidens woo, where Roman soldiers and a primitive Gallic population once eagerly gathered to watch fierce combats.[E]
Rue Lacépède: here at No. 1 stood till recently the Hôpital de la Pitié, founded by Marie de’ Medici in 1613, now replaced by a modern building in the boulevard de l’Hôpital. Its primary destination was a shelter for beggars—a refuge—in order to free Paris from the swarms who “gained their living” by soliciting alms in the streets. The beggars preferred their liberty. By an edict of some years later, however, beggars were taken there and closely shut up, safely guarded. They were called in consequence “les Enfermés.” The hospital grew in extent and importance and was called “Notre-Dame de la Pitié.” The convent Ste-Pélagie was organized in a part of its buildings, in 1660, to become at the Revolution the notorious prison. No. 7 is a handsome eighteenth-century hôtel. Rue Gracieuse has brought down to our time the graceful name of a family who lived there in the thirteenth century and some ancient houses. In Rue du Puits de l’Ermite lived the sculptors Coysevox, Coustou, and the painter Bourdon. The hospice for aged poor in Rue de l’Épée-de-Bois was formerly an asile founded by Sœur Rosalie, known for her self-sacrificing work among the cholera-stricken in 1832, and during the Revolution of 1848. The very name Rue des Patriarches bids us look for vestiges of past ages. The patriarchs, thus memorized, were two fourteenth-century ecclesiastics, one bishop of Paris and Alexandria, the other of Jerusalem, who dwelt in a fine old hôtel, the big courtyard of which has become a market-place, while the street named after them and a curious impasse stretch across the site of the razed mansion. The district was a centre of Calvinism during the religious struggles. The bishop’s old house, “hôtel Chanac,” sheltered numerous Protestants, and religious services were held there.
Rue de l’Arbalète carries us back to the days when archers had their garden and training-ground here. Later an apothecary’s garden was laid out where now we see the extensive modern buildings of the Institut Agronomique. A pharmaceutical school was built in this old street and medicinal herbs were cultivated from the end of the fifteenth and early years of the sixteenth centuries. Remains of a Roman cemetery were found some years ago beneath the paving-stones near No. 16.
In Rue Daubenton we find the presbytery and ancient side-entrance of St-Médard, and in the old wall distinct traces of two great gates which led to the churchyard. Traces of past time are seen also in Rue de la Pitié, where at No. 3 Robespierre’s sister lived and, in 1834, died.
Rue Cardinal-Lemoine begins across the site of the college founded by the Cardinal in 1302, suppressed at the Revolution, used subsequently as a barracks, then razed. The wall of Philippe-Auguste passed on the site of No. 26. Beneath the house a curious leaden coffin was found in 1908. At No. 49 we see the handsome but dilapidated façade of the house of the painter Lebrun, where also Watteau lived for a time. Here the Dames Anglaises had their well-known convent from 1644 to 1859, when they moved to Neuilly. At the Revolution the convent was confiscated, yet Mass was said daily in the chapel through the Terror (see pp. 11, 28).
At No. 65 we see the Collège des Écossais, founded in 1325 by David, bishop of Moray, to which a second foundation due to the bishop of Glasgow, 1639, was added, transferred here from Rue des Armendiers, by Robert Barclay in 1662. Suppressed in 1792, it was used as a prison under the Terror but restored to the Scots when Revolution days were over. The seventeenth-century chapel still stands and the heart of James II is in a casket there. The college staircase, left untouched, is remarkably fine. Close by, at the end of Rue Thouin, in what was formerly Place Fourcy, the brothers Perrault, one the famous architect, the other yet more universally known—the writer of fairy tales—lived and died. Rue de l’Estrapade recalls the days when, on the place hard by, rebellious soldiers were punished by being hoisted to the top of a pole, their hands tied behind their back, then let fall to the ground. Old-time vestiges are seen all along the street. Rue Clotilde crosses what were once the grounds of the abbey Ste-Geneviève.
CHAPTER XXI
THE LUXEMBOURG
ARRONDISSEMENT VI. (LUXEMBOURG)
THE palace that gives its name to the arrondissement was founded by Marie de’ Medici and built on the model of the Pitti palace at Florence by Salomon de Brosse between the years 1615-20. The site chosen was in the neighbourhood of the vast monastery and extensive grounds of the Chartreux. The duc de Luxembourg had an hôtel there. It was sold to the Queen and razed; but vainly was the new edifice on the spot called by its builder “Palais Médicis.” The name of the razed mansion prevailed over that of the Queen.
A garden was begun in 1613 on a space in the Abbey grounds where, in a previous age, a Roman camp had stretched.
JARDIN ET PALAIS DU LUXEMBOURG
Marie left the palace to her second son, Gaston d’Orléans. It was the abode of various royal personages till the outbreak of the Revolution. Then it became a prison. Camille Desmoulins and many of his compeers were shut up there. The Chartreux fled and their monastery was levelled with the ground. The Terror over, the palace became successively Palais des Directeurs, Sénat Conservateur, Chambre des Pairs and, in 1852, Sénat Impérial. After Sedan it became the Sénat de la République. The gardens were extended across the property of the Chartreux. They are beautiful gardens. The Renaissance fountain is the work of Jacques de Brosse. The statues we see on every side among the lawns and the flower-beds, in the shady alleys, most of them the work of noted sculptors, show us famous men and women of every period of French history from Ste-Bathilde and Ste-Geneviève to our own day.
The Petit Luxembourg is also due to Marie de’ Medici, built a few years after the completion of the larger palace. From the day of its inauguration by Richelieu it knew many inhabitants of note: Barras, Buonaparte and Joséphine, etc., sojourned there. It was used at one time as a senate house, then as a Préfecture. We see in an adjacent wall a marble mètre—the standard measure put there under the Directoire. Finally the mansion was chosen as the official residence of the president of the Senate.
Rue Vaugirard, on which the chief entrance of both these palaces open, is the longest street in Paris and one of the oldest. It is, like many another long Paris street, made up of several thoroughfares once distinct. The first of these, Rue du Val-Girad, led from the village named from its chief landowner, an abbé of St-Germain-des-Prés, Gérard de Meul. In close proximity to the Palace is the Odéon, the Second Théâtre-Français, once the “Français” itself, built in 1782, on the site of the hôtel de Condé, burnt down in 1799, rebuilt by Chalgrin, reopened in 1808 as théâtre de l’Impératrice, badly burnt a few years later, restored as the théâtre Français, then again restored in 1875. The place surrounding the theatre and the streets opening out of it are rich in historic and literary associations. No. 1, Café Voltaire, was a meeting-place of eighteenth-century men of letters of every class and type. At No. 2 lived Camille Desmoulins and his Lucile. There he was arrested. In Rue Rotrou, No. 4, now a well-known bookseller’s shop, was once the famous Café Tabourey. André Chenier lived in Rue Corneille. Rue Tournon was opened in 1540, across the site of a horse-market bearing the realistic name Pré-Crotté, on land belonging to the Chapter of St-Germain-des-Prés, and named after its abbé, Cardinal de Tournon. At No. 2, hôtel Chatillon (seventeenth century), Balzac passed three years, 1827-30. No. 4 dates from the days of Louis XIV as hôtel Jean de Palaiseau, later hôtel Montmorency. Lamartine lived here in 1848. At No. 5 lived and died the notorious devineresse Mlle Lenormand, “sybille de l’Impératrice Joséphine.” Another prophetess, Mme Moreau, lived here in the time of Napoléon III. No. 7, hôtel du Sénat et des Nations, sheltered Gambetta for a time, also Alphonse Daudet. At No. 6, hôtel de Brancas (1540), inhabited in its early years by the duchesse de Montpensier, rebuilt under the Regency, we see a very fine staircase and frescoed boudoir. Pacha lived for some years at No. 13. No. 8 dates from 1713, on the site of a more recent hôtel. At No. 10, hôtel Concini, Louis XIII lived for a time to be near his mother, Marie de’ Medici, at the Luxembourg. St. François de Sales stayed here. It served as the hôtel des Ambassadeurs Extraordinaires (1630-1748), was sequestered at the Revolution; then became a barracks as it is to-day. At No. 19 the Scot, Admiral Jones, famous for his help in the American War of Independence, died in 1791; his bones were taken to America in 1905. No. 33, the well-known restaurant Foyot, was in old days hôtel de Tréville, where royalties sometimes dined incognito. At No. 19 we come to an old curiosity shop surmounted by a barber’s pole, and on the doorpost we read the words, with their delicate flavour of irony: