Rase le Sénat,
Accommode la Sorbonne,
Frise l’Académie.”
When the recent war was on the patriotic barber posted up in French, in Greek, in Latin, other words, the following:
Turques, Austro-Hongrois, Boches,
Ne comptez sur Tussieu
Pour tondre vos caboches.”
He died a few months ago, leaving to his widow his shop full of valuable antiquities.
Rue Garancière owes its euphonious name to a notable sixteenth-century firm of dyers—la Maison Garance was on the site of the present publishing house Plon. In the seventeenth century the Garance hôtel was rebuilt as a mansion for the Breton bishop, René de Rieux. After the Revolution it was for thirty years the Mairie of the district. The words “stationnement de nuit pour huit tonneaux” on the wall at No. 9 refer to a vanished market fountain. The Dental School at No. 5 was originally the home of Népomacène Lemercier. Passing through Rue Palatine memorizing Charlotte de Bavière, widow of Henri de Bourbon, who lived at one time at the Luxembourg, we turn down Rue Servandoni, so named in recent times in honour of the architect of the façade of the church St-Sulpice, who died in a house opposite No. 1 (1766). Among the bas-reliefs at No. 14 is one of Servandoni unrolling a plan of St-Sulpice. We see on every side some interesting vestiges of the past. Rue Canivet and Rue Férou show many old houses. Rue du Luxembourg is modern, built along what was once a shady alley of the garden. The Café at No. 1, Rue Fleurus, was erewhile the meeting-place of great artists: Corot, Murger and others of their time. Rue Auguste Comte is another modern street along an old alley of the garden.
Rue d’Assas, across the garden at one point, runs through the whole of this arrondissement over what were once the grounds of the two old convents: the Carmes and Cherche-Midi; it shows a few ancient houses. No. 8 is eighteenth century. No. 19, l’Institut Catholique, is the ancient Carmelite convent. George Sand lived in a house once on the site of No. 28, and Foucault, a celebrated physician who made, besides, the notable proof of the earth’s rotation by the movement of a pendulum, died here in 1868. Littré the great lexicographer died at No. 44. Michelet at No. 76.
Turning again into Rue Vaugirard we find at No. 36, the house built for the household staff of the Princesse Palatine, its kitchen communicating with the Petit Luxembourg by an underground passage; at No. 19 remains of the couvent des Dames Benedictines du Calvaire, founded 1619, and on the site of the Orangery, the Musée du Luxembourg, inaugurated in 1818, which grew out of the exhibition in 1750 of a hundred pictures in possession of the King. Massenet lived and died at No. 48. No. 50, hôtel de Trémouille, called in Revolutionary times hôtel de la Fraternité, where Mme de Lafayette died in 1692. Nos. 52 and 54 are ancient, 56 was the hôtel Kervessan (1700). We reach at No. 70 the old convent of the Carmes Déchaussés.
CHAPTER XXII
LES CARMES
THE tragic story of “les Carmes” has been repeatedly told. The convent was founded in 1613 by Princesse de Conti and la Maréchale d’Ancre for the Carmes Déchaussés, who hailed from Rome. The first stone of their chapel here, dedicated to St. Joseph, was laid by Marie de’ Medici; its dome was the first dome built in Paris; Italian masters painted frescoes on its walls. The Order became very popular among Parisians who liked the eau de Mélisse, which it was the nuns’ business, in the secular line, to make and sell, and they were respected for their goodness to the poor. When the horrors of the Revolution were filling the city with blood, the Carmes were left unmolested, some even hidden away in secret corners of the convent with the connivance of Revolutionary chiefs. Then priests who refused to take the oath of allegiance were shut up there and to-day we see, in the old crypt, the bones of more than a hundred of them, slain by a band led by a revolutionist known as “Tape-dur”—strike-hard. A prison during the Terror, Mme Tallien, Joséphine de Beauharnais, and more than seven hundred others were shut up there, led forth thence, many of them, to execution. These tragic scenes overpast, the convent was let to a manager of public fêtes: its big hall became a ballroom, “le bal des Marronniers.” That wonderful woman Camille de Soyecourt, Sœur Camille, who had previously re-organized the convent, bought it back in 1797. The garden-shed where the bodies of the murdered priests had lain was made into a memorial-chapel, razed in 1867. Then the priests’ bones were carried to the crypt where we now see them. Every year in the first week of September, anniversary of the Massacre, the convent, the crypt and the ancient garden, little changed from Revolution days, are thrown open to the public, where besides the bones of the massacred priests many interesting tombs and relics are reverently cared for. It was at the Institut Catholique in the old Carmelite buildings that the principle of wireless telegraphy was discovered, in 1890.
The ancient burial-ground of St-Sulpice lies beneath the buildings Nos. 100-102 of the long Rue Vaugirard. No. 104, the Salle Montalembert, is the ancient convent of the Pères Maristes. At No. 85 we see an old-time boundary-stone and bas-reliefs.
CHAPTER XXIII
ON ANCIENT ABBEY GROUND
NUMEROUS ancient streets and some modern ones, on time-honoured ground, lead out of Rue Vaugirard. Rue Bonaparte, extending to the banks of the Seine, was formed in 1852 of three old streets. Most of its houses are ancient or show vestiges of past ages and have historic associations. At No. 45 Gambetta dwelt in 1866. No. 36 was the home of Auguste Comte; on the site of No. 35 was the kitchen of the great abbey St-Germain-des-Prés, which stretched across the course of many streets in this district (see p. 201). No. 20, l’hôtel du duc de Vendôme, son of Henri IV and Gabrielle d’Estrées. No. 19, hôtel de Rohan-Rochefort, where the wife of the unfortunate due d’Enghien, shot at Vincennes, used to receive her exiled husband in secret when he came in disguise to Paris. No. 17 is noted as the office till recent years of the Revue des Deux Mondes, first issued there in 1829 as a magazine of travel!
No. 14, École Nationale des Beaux-Arts, on the site of the convent des Petits-Augustins, founded by Margaret de Valois in 1605, of which some walls remain and to which in the nineteenth century were added the hôtels de Conti and de Bouillon, the latter known as hôtel de Chimay. The nucleus of the works of art here seen was a collection of sculptures and other precious relics saved from buildings shattered or suppressed in the days of the Revolution, reverently laid in what was called at first a dépôt des ruines des Monuments. The word ruines was soon omitted and the dépôt became the Musée des Monuments Français, under the able direction of Lenoir. But ruins are still to be seen there, splendid and historic ruins—the façade of the château d’Anet, built for Diane de Poitiers, and remains of many another superb hôtel of bygone ages. A beautiful chapel, paintings by Delaroche, and Ingres, statuary, mouldings of Grecian and Roman sculpture, are among the treasures of the Beaux-Arts. Nos. 1 and 3, forming l’hôtel de Chevandon, was inhabited at one time by vicomte de Beauharnais, the Empress Joséphine’s first husband.
Rue des Beaux-Arts, opened a century ago, has ever been the habitation of distinguished artists and men of letters. Rue Visconti, cut across the Petit Pré-aux-Clercs, the Students’ Fields, in the sixteenth century, bore till the middle of the nineteenth century the more characteristic name Rue des Marais-St-Germain. The Visconti it memoralizes was the architect of Napoléon’s tomb and of restoration work at the Louvre. In its early years it was a resort of Huguenots, and known therefore as the “Petite Genève.” It is very narrow and nearly every house is ancient; Racine died either at No. 13 or at 21. No. 17 was the printing-house founded by de Balzac, to whom it brought ruin. No. 21, hôtel de Ranes.
Rue Jacob, lengthened in the nineteenth century by the Rue Colombier, ancient Chemin-aux-Clercs, owes its name to a chapel built by Margaret de Valois, la Reine Margot—dedicated to the Hebrew patriarch in fulfilment of a vow when the Queen was kept in durance in Auvergne. The street has always been the habitation of notable men of letters, artists, etc. Sterne lived at No. 46. No. 47, Hôpital de la Charité, another of Marie de’ Medici’s foundations, was built for the Frères de St-Jean-de-Dieu. The firm of chemists at No. 48—Rouelle—dates from 1750, formerly on the opposite side of the street. At No. 19 we see in the courtyard vestiges of the old abbey infirmary. The abbey gardens stretched across the site of several houses here. No. 26, hôtel Lefèvre d’Ormesson (1710). At No. 22 there is an eighteenth-century structure in the court called “temple de l’Amitié.” At No. 20 dwelt the great eighteenth-century actress, Adrienne Lecouvreur. In Rue Furstemburg we find vestiges of the abbey stables and coach-house.
Rue de l’Abbaye, opened in the last year of the eighteenth century, stretches across a line once in the heart of the famous abbey grounds. The first church on the site of the fine old edifice we see there now, was built under the direction of Germain, bishop of Paris, in the time of Childebert, about the middle of the sixth century, dedicated to St-Vincent and known as St-Vincent et Ste-Croix, on account of its crucifix form. Bishop Germain added a monastery. In the ninth century came the devastating Normans. The church and convent were destroyed to be rebuilt on so grand and extensive a scale two centuries later, strongly fortified, surrounded by a moat, watch-towers, etc.—a masterpiece of thirteenth-century architecture. In the eighteenth century the abbey prison was taken over by the State, the Garde Française lodged there. In September, 1792 Mme Roland, Charlotte Corday and many another notable prisoner of those terrible days were shut up within its walls. The fine library and beautiful refectory were burnt and there, that fatal September, saw some three hundred victims of Revolutionary fury put to death, the greater number slain on the spot where Rue Buonaparte touches the place in front of the church. The prison stood till 1857. The church is full within as without of intensely interesting architectural and historic features: its tower is the most ancient church tower of the city. In the little garden square we see the ruins of the lady-chapel built by Pierre de Montereau, architect of the Ste-Chapelle. The Gothic roof, the round-arched nave, the splendid chapel of the Sacré-Cœur, once the church choir, with its pillars coloured deep red, the wonderful capitals of the chancel, the old glass in the chapel Ste-Geneviève, the tombs and the statues, and Flandrin’s glorious frescoes, all appeal to the lover of the beautiful and the historic. Of the houses in the vicinity of the church many are ancient, others are on the site of abbey buildings swept away. No. 3 Rue de l’Abbaye, the abbey palace, dates from 1586, built with a subterranean passage by Cardinal Charles de Bourbon. The last abbot who dwelt there was Casimir, King of Poland, whose tomb is in the church. In modern times it has served as a studio and is now a dispensary. At No. 13 we see the last traces of the monastery with its thirteenth-century cloister. At No. 15 Rue St-Benoît are the remains of an old tower; at No. 11 vestiges of an ancient wall; at No. 2, an old house once the abode of Marc Orry, a famous printer of the days of Henri IV. Through pipes down this old street water once flowed from the Seine to the abbey, and it went by the name Rue de l’Égout. The painter of the last portrait of Marie-Antoinette lived for some time at No. 17.
Rue du Four, i.e. Oven Street, the site in olden days of the abbey bakehouse, and one of the most important streets of the abbey precincts, bearing in its early days the royal name Chaussée du Roi, has been almost entirely rebuilt in modern times. Here and there we find traces of another age. Robespierre lived here.
Rue du Vieux-Colombier, recalling by its name the abbey dove-cot, has known among its inhabitants Boileau, Lesage, the husband of Mme Récamier. Few ancient houses are left there now. We see bas-reliefs at No. 1.
Rue de Mézières is so called from the hôtel Mézières given in 1610 to the Jesuits as their noviciat. No. 9 is ancient. Rue Madame, which it crosses, existed under different names from the sixteenth century, part of it as Rue du Gindre, a reference to the abbey bakehouse once near, for a gindre is the baker’s chief man. The name of Madame was given in 1790 to the part newly opened across the Luxembourg gardens by the new occupant of the palace, the comte de Province, brother of Louis XVI, in honour of his wife. That did not hinder the count from building in the same street a fine mansion for his mistress, comtesse de Balbi, razed some years ago. Flandrin lived at No. 54. Renan at No. 55. Rue Cassette shows us a series of past-time houses, many of them associated with the memory of notable persons of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. Alfred de Musset lived there. No. 12 was in the hands of the Carmelites till the Revolution. No. 21 belonged to the Jesuits till their expulsion in 1672. In the garden of No. 24 the vicar of St-Sulpice lay hidden after escaping from the Carmes at the time of the Massacre. Rue Honoré-Chevalier, in the days of Henri IV Rue du Chevalier Honoré, shows in its name another link with the abbey bakehouse, for it was that of the master-baker who cut the street across his own property.
The church St-Sulpice, with its very characteristic façade, the work of Servandoni, was begun in the middle of the seventeenth century on the site of a thirteenth-century church dedicated to St. Pierre, but was not finished till nearly a century later. Servandoni’s towers were disapproved of; one was demolished and rebuilt by Chalgrin. The other remains as Servandoni designed it. Entering the church we see its walls covered with frescoes and paintings; they are all by celebrated artists. Those in the lady-chapel by Van Loo, the rest by Delacroix and other masters of modern times. The high altar is unusually large. The shells for holy water were a gift from the Republic of Venice to François I. The pulpit with its carved figures was given by Richelieu. In the Chapelle-des-Étudiants is an organ that belonged to Marie-Antoinette for the use of her young son, and has been played by Glück and Mozart. A sacrilegious fête was held in the church in Revolution days and a great banquet given in honour of Napoléon. The grand organ is very fine, its woodwork designed by Chalgrin. The services are noted for the beauty of their music. The place dates from 1800, built on the site of the ancient seminary “des Sulpiciens,” razed by Napoléon. The present Séminaire, no longer a seminary—forfeited to the State in 1906—was built in 1820-25. The immense fountain was put up there nearly half a century later, an old smaller one taken away.
Almost parallel with Rue Bonaparte the old Rue de Seine stretches from the banks of the river to Rue St-Sulpice. It dates in its most ancient part from 1250 as the Pré-aux-Clercs road. No. 1 is a dependency of the Institute. No. 6 is on the site of a palais built by la Reine Margot on leaving l’hôtel de Sens, some traces of which are seen among the buildings on the spot, and part of the Queen’s gardens. No. 10 was formerly the Art School of Rosa Bonheur. At No. 12 are vestiges of l’hôtel de la Roche-Guyon and Turenne (1620). Nos. 41, 42, 57, 56, 101 show interesting seventeenth-century features. Rue Mazarine is another parallel street—a street of ancient houses. No. 12 is notable as the site of the Jeu de Paume, a tennis-court, where in 1643 Molière set up his Illustre théâtre. No. 30, hôtel des Pompes, where died in 1723 the founder of the Paris Fire Brigade; a remarkable man he ... an actor in Molière’s troup, the father of thirty-two children! On the site of No. 42 stood once another tennis-court, which became the théâtre Guénégaud, where the first attempts at Opera were made.
Rue de Nesle, till the middle of last century Rue d’Anjou-Dauphine, stretches across the site of part of the famous hôtel de Nesle; a subterranean passage formerly ran beneath it. The interesting house No. 8 is one of the many said to be a palace of la Reine Blanche, the mother of St. Louis. There were, however, as a matter of fact, many “Reines Blanches” in France in olden times, for royal French widows wore white, not black for mourning.
Rue de Nevers (thirteenth century) was in past days closed at both ends and called therefore Rue des Deux-Portes. In Rue Guénégaud we find at No. 29 a tower of Philippe-Auguste’s wall. All its houses are ancient. At No. 1 we see the remains of a famous théâtre des Marionnettes.
Rue de l’Ancienne-Comédie, in a line with Rue Mazarine, erewhile Rue des Fossés-St-Germain, is full of historic memories. The Café Procope at No. 13, now a restaurant, was the first café opened in Paris (1689). Noted men of every succeeding century drank, talked, made merry or aired their grievances within its walls: modern paintings there record the features of some of them. No. 14 was the theatre from which the street takes its name, succeeded by the Odéon (see p. 184). Rue Grégoire-de-Tours shows us several curious old houses. At No. 32 we see finely chiselled statues on the façade. Rue de Buci, originally Rue de Bussy from the buis—box-bush—once growing there, the ecclesiastical “Via Sancti Germani de Pratis,” later Rue du Pilori, passed in ancient days through Philippe-Auguste’s wall by a great gate with two towers opened for the purpose. For it was an all-important thoroughfare. The carrefour whence it started was the busiest spot of the whole district. Persons of ill-repute or evil conduct were chained there; those condemned to death were hung there. Sedan chairs for the peaceable were hired there. Thither Revolutionist volunteers flocked to be enrolled in 1792, and there the first of the September massacres was perpetrated. Most of the ancient buildings along its course have been replaced by modern structures. The street has been in part widened; the site of some old structures lately razed has not yet been built on.
Rue Dauphine, named in honour of the son of Henri IV, later Louis XIII, dates from 1607. Most of the houses date from that century or the century following. Rue Mazet, opening out of it at No. 49, was famed in past days for the old inn and coaching station—“le Cheval Blanc.” It existed from 1612 to 1906. Near it was the restaurant Magny, where literary lions of the early years of the nineteenth century—G. Sand, Flaubert, the Goncourts, etc.—met and dined. Some old houses still stand there.
Rue St-André-des-Arts, where in ancient days dwelt the makers and vendors of “arcs,” i.e. bows, and along which the pious passed to pray at St-André on abbey territory for those who had suffered death by burning, (les Arsis) was in long-gone times a vine-bordered path reaching to the city wall. It was known at one time as Rue St-Germain, and was a great shoemaking street. It is rich in vestiges of the past. Almost every house has interesting features. The modern Lycée Fénelon at No. 45, the first girls’ lycée in Paris, stands on the site of the ancient hôtel of the ducs d’Orléans. No. 52, hôtel du Tillet-de-la-Bussière. Nos. 47-49, on the site of the ancient mansion of the Kings of Navarre and of the Vieuville, of which some traces are still seen. At No. 11, a house on the site of the place where stood the old church, Gounod was born in 1818. Opening out of it is the Passage du Commerce-St-André, cut in 1776, across the site of Philippe-Auguste’s great wall of which, at No. 4, we find the base of a tower, and in the Cour de Rohan, more correctly perhaps Rouen, a very perfect fragment of the city rampart. The archbishops of Rouen had an hôtel here, and the vestiges we see before us are those of a mansion built on its site by King Henri II for Diane de Poitiers. Rue des Grands-Augustins, in part on the site of an ancient Augustine convent, was, in the thirteenth century, Rue l’Abbé de St-Denis. Many of its houses show interesting traces of the past. The reputed restaurant Lapérouse at No. 1 is a Louis XV hôtel. At No. 5 and No. 7 remains of the ancient hôtel d’Hercule, noted for its mythological paintings and tapestries, once the Paris abode of the princess of Savoie Carignan. At No. 3 Rue Pont de Lodi, opening at No. 6, we see traces of the convent refectory. Littré was born at No. 21 (1808). In 1841 Heine lived at No. 25. Sardou in his youth at No. 26. Augustin Thierry lived for ten years in a house near the quay.
Almost every house in Rue Christine, named after the second daughter of Henri IV, dates from the seventeenth century.
CHAPTER XXIV
IN THE VICINITY OF PLACE ST-MICHEL
AN ancient place and part of the old Rue de l’Hirondelle, and an ancient chapel stretched in bygone days where now we see the broad new Place St-Michel. The colossal fountain we see there was put up in 1860, replacing a seventeenth-century fountain on the ancient place, which lay a little more to the south. Of the boulevard—the famous “Boule Miche”—we will speak later (see p. 306).
Turning into Rue de l’Hirondelle, in the twelfth century Rue l’Arondale-en-Laac, then Rue Herondalle, we see remains of the ancient Collège d’Antin, founded in 1371, and an eighteenth-century house on the site of the mansion of the bishop of Chartres previously there. Rue Gît-le-Cœur, probably indicated in fourteenth-century days the dwelling-place of the King’s cook ... Gille his name; cœur, a misspelling for queux, cook. At No. 5 we see remains of hôtel Séguier.
Rue Séguier was a thoroughfare, a country road in Childebert’s time; in the fourteenth century it became a street with the name Pavée-St-André-des-Arts. Every house has some interesting feature. The famous Hostellerie St-François till the eighteenth century on the site of No. 3, was the starting-point of the coaches for Normandy and Brittany. At No. 6 we see traces of the hôtel de Nemours. The Frères Cordonniers de St-Crépin, founded in 1645 (Shoemakers’ Confraternity), had its quarters where we see the Nos. 9, 11, 13. J. de Ste-Beuve, the Jansenist, was born and in 1677 died at No. 17. At No. 18 we see all that is left of a fourteenth-century hôtel de Nevers on the site of an older hôtel. The burial-ground of the church St-André stretched along part of Rue Suger: the presbytery was on the site of No. 13. Every house in this narrow old street tells of past days. At No. 3 we find traces of the chapel of the Collège de Boissy, founded in 1360 by a Canon of Chartres for seven poor students. Another old-time college stood in Rue de l’Éperon and till 1907, an ancient house, a dependency of the church St-André-des-Arts. Rue Serpente, a winding road in its earliest days, a street about the year 1200, was the site of the celebrated hôtel Serpente, and of the firm of printers where Tallien was an employé. The very modern Rue Danton, with its emphatically up-to-date structure in re-enforced concrete, has swept away a host of ancient houses. The hôtel des Sociétés Savantes is on the site of the hôtel de Thou, l’hôtel des États-de-Blois in the time of Louis XV.
Rue Mignon, twelfth century, recalls yet another college founded in 1343 by a dignitary of Chartres of this name; ancient houses at Nos. 1 and 5.
The most interesting of these old streets is Rue Hautefeuille with its two turrets, one at No. 5, the ancient hôtel of the Abbots of Fécamp, fourteenth century, the other octagonal, at No. 21, on the corner of what was once part of the Collège Damville of the same date: there in Roman times stood the castle Altum Folium—Hautefeuille—of which remains were found in the fourteenth century. This old street was no doubt a road leading to the citadel.
CHAPTER XXV
L’ODÉON
AN interesting corner of Old Paris lies on the north-east side of the Odéon. Rue Racine, opening on the place before the theatre, runs through the ancient territory of the Cordeliers. Vestiges of a Roman cemetery were found in recent years beneath the soil at No. 28, and at No. 11 were unearthed traces of the city wall of Philippe-Auguste. George Sand lived for a time at No. 3. Rue de l’École de Médecine was once in part Rue des Cordeliers, in part Rue des Boucheries-St-Germain, a name telling its own tale. No less than twenty-two butchers’ shops flourished here. At the outbreak of the Revolution a butcher was president of the famous club des Cordeliers established in the ancient convent chapel (1791-94). The refectory, the church-like structure we see at No. 15, now an anatomy museum, built by Anne of Bretagne in the fifteenth century, is all that remains of the convent buildings dating in part from the early years of the twelfth century, which covered a great part of this district from the days of Louis IX. Many of these buildings were put to secular uses before the outbreak of the Revolution. The cloister stood till 1877, made into a prison, then was razed to make room for the École de Médecine built in part with the ancient cloister stones. The chapel stood on what is now Place de l’École-de-Médecine. The amphitheatre of the School of Surgery at No. 5, an association founded by St. Louis, dates from the end of the seventeenth century on the site of an older structure. Above the cellars at No. 4 stood in olden days the College of Damville. The Faculté de Médecine at No. 12 is on the site of the Collège-Royal de Bourgogne, founded in 1331. The first stone of the present building was laid by Louis XVI. The edifice was enlarged in later days, restored in 1900. The bas-relief on its frontal, sculptured as a figure of Louis XV, was by order of the Commune transformed in 1793 into the woman draped we see there now. Skulls of famous persons, some noted criminals, may be seen at the Museum. Marat lived and died in Rue des Cordeliers. There Charlotte Corday was seized by the enraged mob. Traces of the ancient convent may be seen in the short Rue Antoine-Dubois. Rue Dupuytren lies across what was the convent graveyard. Nos. 7-9 were dependencies of the old convent. No. 7 was later a free school of drawing directed by Rosa Bonheur. Rue Monsieur-le-Prince, so named in 1806, because of the vicinity of the hôtel du Prince de Condé, was in olden days Chemin des Fossés. We see there many characteristic houses. Auguste Comte died at No. 10 in 1857.
CHAPTER XXVI
ROUND ABOUT THE CARREFOUR DE LA CROIX-ROUGE
PASSING to the western half of the arrondissement, we turn into the modern Rue de Rennes, running south from Place St-Germain-des-Prés along the lines of razed convent buildings or their vanished gardens. The short Rue Gozlin opening out of it dates from the thirteenth century, its present name recording that of a bishop of Paris who defended the city against invading Normans in the ninth century. Two only of the houses we see there now are ancient, Nos. 1 and 5. At No. 50 we see the seventeenth-century entrance of the old Cour du Dragon, with its balcony and huge piece of sculpture dating from 1735; the quaint houses of the alley, with its gutter in the middle, were in past days the habitation of ironmongers. It leads down into the old Rue du Dragon, which began as Rue du Sépulcre, being then the property of the monks of St-Sépulcre. A fine hôtel stood once at either end. At No. 76 we see the remains of a mansion, taken later for a convent, where Bossuet sojourned. Nos. 147-127 are on the site of a Roman cemetery.
Rue Cherche-Midi, once Chasse-Midi, takes its name from an ancient sign-board illustrating the old French proverb: “Chercher midi à quatorze heures,” i.e. to look for something wide of the mark. Many old-time houses still stand along its course. It starts from the Carrefour de la Croix-Rouge, where, before a cross in the centre of the Carrefour, criminals and political offenders were put to death. The name is probably due to a sign-board rather than to the alleged colour of this cross. In this quiet spot, as historians have remarked, a flaring red cross would hardly have been in keeping with the temper of its patrician inhabitants. The Revolutionists called it Carrefour du Bonnet-Rouge. At No. 12 we see a fine grille. One of the most interesting historically inhabited hôtels of the city stood till 1907 on the site of No. 37, in olden times the dependency of a convent, latterly hôtel des Conseils-de-Guerre, razed to make way for the brand-new boulevard Raspail. The military prison opposite is on the site of a convent organized in the house of an exiled Calvinist, razed in 1851. Nos. 85, 87, 89, eighteenth century, belonged to a branch of the Montmorency—knew successive inhabitants of historic fame and illustrious name. A fine fountain is seen in the Cour des Vieilles-Tuileries at No. 86. Several old shorter streets lead out of this long one. In Rue St-Romain, named after an old-time Prior of St-Germain-des-Prés, we see the fine old hôtel de M. de Choiseul, now the headquarters of the National Savings Bank. Rue St-Placide, seventeenth century, recording the name of a celebrated Benedictine monk, shows some ancient vestiges. Huysmans died at No. 31 in 1907. In Rue Dupin, once Petite Rue du Bac, we see ancient houses at Nos. 19-12, in the latter a carved wood Louis XIII staircase. Rue du Regard, another “Chemin Herbu” of past days, records by its present name the existence of an old fountain once here, now placed near the fountain Médici of the Luxembourg gardens. The publishing house Didot at No. 3 is on the site of a handsome ancient mansion once the home of the children of Mme de Montespan, sacrificed to the boulevard Raspail in 1907. Nos. 5-7 date from the first years of the eighteenth century. The doors of the Mont de Pitié are all that is left of hôtel de la Guiche once on the site.
Rue de Sèvres, forming in the greater part of its course the boundary between arrondissements VI and VII, running on into arrondissement XV, was known familiarly in old days as Rue de la Maladrerie, on account of its numerous hospitals. They are numerous still. At No. 11 and No. 13 we find remains of the couvent des Prémontrés Réformés founded by Anne d’Autriche, 1661. Rue Récamier was recently opened on the site of the famous Abbaye-aux-Bois, where for thirty years Mme de Récamier lived the “simple life,” courted none the less by a crowd of ardent admirers—the tout Paris of that day. The Abbaye, as a convent, counted notable women among its abbesses; at the Revolution it was suppressed and let out in flats till its regrettable demolition in 1908. The Square Potain close by, now known as Square du Bon Marché, is on the site of a leper-house which dated from the reign of Philippe-Auguste. A convent and adjoining buildings of ancient date were destroyed to allow boulevard Raspail to pursue its course. An old house still stands at No. 26; vestiges at No. 31. At No. 42 we see the Hospice des Incurables, founded in 1634 by Cardinal de la Rochefoucauld and known since 1878 as l’Hospice Laennec. Here in 1819 died the woman Simon, the jailer of the little dauphin “Louis XVII,” after a sojourn of twenty-five years. The minister Turgot and other persons of note lie buried in the chapel. The Egyptian fountain dates from 1806. At No. 84 we see very recently erected houses let out in flats on the site of the couvent des Oiseaux, dating from the early years of the eighteenth century—the prison du Bonnet Rouge during the Revolution, a convent school and pension in 1818 till its suppression in 1906. The “Oiseaux”—birds—were perhaps those of an aviary, or maybe those painted by Pigalle on the walls of one of the rooms. The Lazarist convent at No. 95 was previously a private mansion dating from the time of Louis XV. The chapel dates from 1827 and sheltered for some years the remains of St-Vincent-de-Paul. In the eighteenth century, on the site of No. 125, wild beast fights took place. The last numbers of the street are in arrondissement XV. There we see the ancient Benedictine convent, suppressed in 1779—become l’Hôpital Necker. The hospital at No. 149 began life in 1676 as a community of “gentilshommes”; seventy years later it was the “Maison Royale de l’Enfant-Jésus” under the patronage of Marie Leczinska, enlarged by the gift of an adjoining mansion. Closed at the Revolution, it served for a time as a coal-store, then became a National orphanage, and in 1802 the “Enfants Malades”; its ancient chapel was replaced by the chapel we see under Napoléon III.
CHAPTER XXVII
HÔTEL DES INVALIDES
ARRONDISSEMENT VII. (PALAIS-BOURBON)
IT was Henri IV, le bon Roi, who first planned the erection of a special hôtel to shelter aged and wounded soldiers. Meanwhile they were lodged in barracks in different parts of the city. The fine hôtel we know was built by Louis XIV, opened in 1674, restored in after years by Napoléon I, and again by Napoléon III. The greatest military names of France figure in the list of its governors.
On July 14th, 1789, the Paris mob rushed to the Invalides for arms wherewith to storm the Bastille. On the 30th of March, 1814, nearly fifteen hundred flags and trophies were destroyed in a great bonfire made in the court to prevent them from falling into the hands of the enemy Allies. But the chapel is still hung with flags and trophies taken in wars long overpast and three museums—le Musée Historique, le Musée d’Artillerie, le Musée des Plans-en-relief—have been important features at les Invalides since 1905. The ancient refectory has become la Salle-des-Armures, decorated with frescoes illustrative of the great battles of bygone days from the time of Louis XIV onward. The big cannons—la batterie triomphale—we see behind the moats are those captured in the Napoléonic wars. Now in these poignant days of unparalleled warfare, immense cannons of the most up-to-date construction, monstrous airships, broken zeppelins, are gathered in the great courtyards. In the chapel St-Louis we see the tombs of distinguished soldiers and memorials in honour of the heroes of old-time war-days. The dome-church, separated from it by the immense stained-glass window, was built as a special chapel for the King and Court, its dome decorated with paintings by the greatest artists of the time. The sumptuous tomb of Napoléon I, the work of Visconti, was placed there in the second half of the nineteenth century.
The gravestone from St-Helena and other souvenirs were put in the chapel St-Nicolas in 1910. Of late years no new pensioners were received, veterans of war-days past were for long the sole inhabitants of the soldiers’ quarters—the only “invalides.” Now the institution is once more to be peopled with a crowd of disabled heroes, victims of the terrible war.
Avenue de Tourville, planned when the hôtel des Invalides was built, was not opened till the century following. Of the four avenues opening out of it, Avenue de Ségur, Avenue de Villars, Avenue de Breteuil, opened in 1780, record the names of distinguished generals of Napoléon’s time, but show us no historic structures. In Avenue de Lowenthal we see the façade of l’École Militaire, a vast building reaching to Avenue de la Motte-Picquet. It dates from 1752, the work of Gabriel, and was originally destined for the military education of five hundred “young gentlemen.” Under the Convention it was turned into a flour store. Restored as a school, the “Enfants de Mars”—military students of all ranks—were admitted there. Young Buonaparte, come from Corsica to study in Paris, spent a year here and was confirmed in its chapel, now used for storing clothes. When that young student had made himself Emperor, the Imperial Guard took up their quarters here—to be followed after 1824 by the Royal Guard. Under Napoléon III the building was considerably changed.
At No. 13 boulevard des Invalides we catch a glimpse of the former couvent du Sacré-Cœur, the old hôtel Biron: its chief entrance is Rue de Varennes (see p. 194). No. 41 was l’hôtel de Condé. No. 50 l’hôtel de Richepanse. No. 52 l’hôtel de Masserano. No. 56 is the Institution Nationale des Jeunes Aveugles, a modern structure, its foundation dating from 1791, one of the last foundations of Louis XVI. The statue we see is that of Valentin Haüy, its original organizer.
Boulevard de la Tour Maubourg is lined by fine hôtels, all modern, only the names of their owners recalling days past. Avenue de la Motte-Picquet is equally devoid of historic interest, save as regards l’École-Militaire (see p. 191). But turning aside from these fine latter-day avenues, we find in the vicinity of the Invalides several of the oldest historic streets of the Rive Gauche.
Rue de Babylone existed under other names from the early years of the fifteenth century. Its present designation is in memory of Bernard de Ste-Thérèse, bishop of Babylone, who owned property there whereon, at No. 22, was built in 1663 the Séminaire des Missions Étrangères. At No. 20 we see the statue of Notre-Dame de la Paix with the inscription: “l’Original de cette image est un chef d’œuvre si parfait que le Tout-Puissant qui l’a fait s’est renfermé dans son ouvrage.” At No. 21 live “sisters” of St-Vincent-de-Paul, so active always in Christian work and service. No. 32 is the ancient Petit hôtel Matignon. No. 33 is the property of the sisters of No. 21. At No. 49 we see the ancient barracks of les Gardes Françaises, so gallantly defended by the Suisses in July, 1830.
In the short Rue Monsieur (the Monsieur of the day was the brother of Louis XVI), we find at No. 12 the hôtel built for Mademoiselle de Bourbon-Condé, aunt of the duc d’Enghien, abbesse de Remiremont, who lies buried beneath the pavement of the Benedictine convent at No. 20. No. 5 shows us remains of the hôtel of duc de Saint-Simon, the famous diarist-historian. Passing up Rue Barbet de Jouy, cut in 1838 across the site of an ancient mansion, we come to Rue de Varennes, a long line of splendid dwellings dating from a past age.
CHAPTER XXVIII
OLD-TIME MANSIONS OF THE RIVE GAUCHE
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 de l’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 Mars more 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.