Historic Paris

CHAPTER XXXI

LES CHAMPS-ÉLYSÉES

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

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

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

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

CHAPTER XXXII

FAUBOURG ST-HONORÉ

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

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

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

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

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

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

CHAPTER XXXIII

PARC MONCEAU

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

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

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

CHAPTER XXXIV

IN THE VICINITY OF THE OPERA

ARRONDISSEMENT IX. (OPÉRA)

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

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

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

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

CHAPTER XXXV

ON THE WAY TO MONTMARTRE

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

CHAPTER XXXVI

ON THE SLOPES OF THE BUTTE

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

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

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

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

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

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

CHAPTER XXXVII

THREE ANCIENT FAUBOURGS

ARRONDISSEMENT X. (ENTREPÔT)

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

CHAPTER XXXVIII

IN THE PARIS “EAST END”

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

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

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

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

CHAPTER XXXIX

ON TRAGIC GROUND

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

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

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

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

CHAPTER XL

LES GOBELINS

ARRONDISSEMENT XIII. (GOBELINS)

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

CASTEL DE LA REINE BLANCHE

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

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

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

LA SALPÉTRIÈRE