CHAPTER XLII
IN THE SOUTH-WEST
ARRONDISSEMENT XV. (VAUGIRARD)
RUE VAUGIRARD, originally Val Girard, which we enter here, on its course from arrondissement VI (see p. 164), is the longest street in Paris, a union of several streets under one name, extending on beyond the city bounds. At No. 115 we find an ancient house recently restored by a man of artistic mind; at No. 144, ancient buildings connected with the old hospital l’Enfant-Jésus, its façade giving on Rue de Sèvres. At intervals all along the street, and in the short streets opening out of it, we come upon old-time houses, none, however, of special interest. In this section of its course Rue de la Procession, opening at No. 247, dates from the close of the fourteenth century, a reminiscence of the days when ecclesiastical processions passed along its line to the church. Rue Cambronne, named after the veteran of Waterloo, dates from the first Empire and shows us at Nos. 98, 104, 117, houses of the time when it was Rue de l’École—i.e. l’École Militaire.
The modern church St-Lambert in Rue Gerbert replaces the ancient church of Vaugirard in Rue Dombasle, once Rue des Vignes, the centre of a vine-growing district, where till recent years stood the old orphanage of St-Vincent-de-Paul. Rue de la Croix-Nivert, traced in the early years of the eighteenth century, records the existence of one of the crosses to be found in old days at different points within and without the bounds of the city. In Rue du Hameau, important Roman remains were found a few years ago. In Rue Lecourbe, known in the seventeenth century as le Grand Chemin de Bretagne, in the nineteenth century for some years as Rue de Sèvres, like the old street it starts from at Square Pasteur, prehistoric remains were found in 1903. Rue Blomet, the old Meudon road, was in past days the habitation of gardeners, several old gardeners’ cottages still stand there. The district known as Grenelle, a village beyond the Paris bounds till 1860, has few vestiges of interest. The first stone of its church, St-Jean Baptiste, was laid by the duchesse d’Angoulême, daughter of Louis XVI. The long modern Rue de la Convention is known beyond its immediate vicinity chiefly for the Hôpital Boucicaut built by the founder and late owner of the Bon Marché.
Avenue Suffren, bounding this arrondissement on its even-number side, dates from 1770. Rue Desaix was once le Chemin de l’Orme de Grenelle. Rue de la Fédération memorizes the Fête de la Fédération held on the Champ de Mars in 1790. The oldest street of the district is Rue Dupleix, a road in the fifteenth century and known in the sixteenth century as Sentier de la Justice or Chemin du Gibet, a name which explains itself. Then it became Rue Neuve. The Château de Grenelle stood in old days on the site of the barracks on Place Dupleix, used in the Revolution as a powder factory; there in 1794 a terrific explosion took place, killing twelve hundred persons. Where the Grande Roue turns, on the ground now bright with flower-beds and grassy lawns, duels were fought erewhile. This is the quarter of new streets, brand-new avenues.
Crossing the Seine at this point we find ourselves in arrondissement XVI, for to its area south of the Étoile and surrounding avenues, were added in 1860 the suburban villages of Passy and Auteuil.
CHAPTER XLIII
IN NEWER PARIS
ARRONDISSEMENT XVI. (PASSY)
WE have left far behind us now Old Paris, the Paris of the Kings of France, of the upheaval of Revolution days. The 16th arrondissement, save in the remotest corners of Passy and Auteuil, suburban villages still in some respects, is the arrondissement of the “Nineteenth Century and After.” Round about the Étoile the Napoléonic stamp is very evident. It is the district of the French Empire, First and Second. The Arc de Triomphe was Napoléon’s conception. The broad thoroughfare stretching as Avenue des Champs-Elysées to Place de la Concorde, as Avenue de la Grande Armée to the boundary of Neuilly, was planned by Napoléon I, as were also the other eleven surrounding avenues. The erections of his day and following years were well designed, well built, solid, systematical, mathematically correct, excellent work as constructions—spacious, airy, hygienic, but devoid of architectural poetry. The buildings of the Second Empire were a little less well designed, less well built and yet more symmetrical, with a very marked utilitarian stamp and a marked lack of artistic inspiration. Those of a later date, with the exception of some few edifices on ancient models, are, alas! for the most part, utilitarian only—supremely utilitarian. Paris dwelling-houses of to-day are, save for a fine hôtel here and there, “maisons de rapport,” where rapport is plainly their all-prevailing raison d’être. The new houses are one like the other, so like as to render new streets devoid of landmarks: “Où sont les jours d’Antan,” when each street, each house had its distinctive feature? Only in the Paris of generations past.
Of Napoléon’s avenues seven, if we include the odd-number side of Avenue des Champs-Élysées and of the Grande Armée, are in this arrondissement. The beautiful Avenue du Bois-de-Boulogne is due to Napoléon III, opened in 1854, as Avenue de l’Impératrice. Handsome mansions line it on both sides. One spot remained as it had been before the erection of all these fine hôtels until recent years—a rude cottage-dwelling stood there, owned by a coal merchant who refused to sell the territory at any price. Francs by the million were offered for the site—in vain. But it went at last. In 1909 a private mansion worthy of its neighbour edifices was built on the site.
Avenue Victor-Hugo began in 1826 as Avenue Charles X. From the short Rue du Dôme, on high ground opening out of it, we see in the distance the dôme of the Invalides. To No. 117 the first crêche opened in or near Paris, at Chaillot (1844), was removed some years ago. Gambetta lived for several years and died at No. 57, in another adjoining street, Rue St-Didier. At No. 124 of the Avenue we see a bust of Victor-Hugo, who died in 1885 in the house this one replaces. Place Victor-Hugo began in 1830 as Rond-Point de Charles X. The figure of the poet set up in 1902 is by Barrias. The church St-Honoré d’Eylau dates from 1852. It was pillaged by the Fédérés in 1871. Lamartine passed the last year of his life in a simple chalet near the square named after him; his statue there dates from 1886.
General Boulanger lived at No. 3 Rue Yvon de Villarceau, opening out of Rue Copernic. Rue Dosne is along the site of the extensive grounds left by Thiers. At No. 46 Rond-Point Bugeaud we see the foundation Thiers, a handsome hôtel bequeathed by the widow of the statesman as an institution for the benefit of young students of special aptitude in science, philosophy, history.
Avenue d’Eylau, planned to be Place du Prince Impérial, possessed till recently, in a courtyard at No. 11, three bells supposed to be those of the ancient Bastille clock.
Avenue Malakoff, began in 1826 as Avenue St-Denis. At No. 66 we see the chapel of ease of St-Honoré d’Eylau, of original style and known as the Cité Paroissiale St-Honoré.
Avenue Kléber began in 1804 as Avenue du Roi de Rome. Beneath the pavement at No. 79 there is a circular flight of steps built in 1786, to go down to the Passy quarries.
Rue Galilée, opening out of it at No. 55, began as Rue des Chemin de Versailles. Rue Belloy was formed in 1886 on the site of the ancient Chaillot reservoirs.
Avenue d’Iéna lies along the line of the ancient Rue des Batailles de Chaillot, where, in 1593, without the city bounds, Henri IV and Gabrielle d’Estrées had a house. Rue Auguste-Vaquerie is the former Rue des Bassins. The Anglican church there dedicated to St-George dates from 1888 and is, like the French churches, always open—a friendly English church—with beautiful decorations and furnishings. The short Rue Keppler dates from 1772 and was at one time Rue Ste-Geneviève. Rue Georges-Bizet lies along the line of an ancient Ruelle des Tourniquets, a name reminiscent of country lanes and stiles; in its lower part it was of yore Rue des Blanchisseuses, where clean linen hung out freely to dry. The Greek church there, with its beautiful Iconostase and paintings by Charles Lemaire, is modern (1895). Rue de Lubeck began as a tortuous seventeenth-century road, crossing the grounds of the ancient convent of the Visitation.
The statue of Washington in the centre of Place d’Iéna, the scene of so many momentous gatherings, was given by the women of the United States “en mémoire de l’amitié et de l’aide fraternelle donnée par la France à leurs frères pendant la lutte pour l’indépendance.” The Musée Guinet on the site of the hippodrome of earlier years, an oriental museum, was opened in 1888. Rue Boissière, in the eighteenth century in part Rue de la Croix-Boissière, reminds us of the wooden crosses to which in olden days the branches of box which replace palm were fixed on Palm Sunday. Along Rue de Longchamp, then a country lane, seventeenth and eighteenth-century Parisians passed in pilgrimage to Longchamp Abbey, while at an old farm on the Rond-Point, swept away of late years, ramblers of note, Boileau and La Fontaine among the number, stopped to drink milk fresh and pure. The name of the Bouquet de Longchamp recalls the days when green trees clustered there. Rue Lauriston, a thoroughfare in the eighteenth century, was long known as Chemin du Bel-air.
Rue de Chaillot, which leads us to Avenue Marceau, was the High Street of the village known in the eleventh century by the Roman name Colloelum. It was Crown property, and Louis XI gave it to Philippe de Commines. In 1659 the district became a Paris faubourg and in 1787 was included within the city bounds. There on the high land now the site of the Trocadéro palace and gardens, the Château de Chaillot, its name changed later to Grammont, was built by Catherine de’ Medici. Henriette, widow of Charles I of England, back in her own land of France, made it into a convent (1651). Its first Superior was Mlle de Lafayette; its walls sheltered many women of note and rank, Louise de la Vallière is said to have fled thither twice, to be twice regained by the King. The chapel was on the site of the pond in the Trocadéro gardens. There the hearts of the Catholic Stuarts were taken for preservation. Suppressed at the Revolution, the convent was subsequently razed to the ground by Napoléon, who planned the erection of a palace there for his son the “Roi de Rome.” The old street has still several old houses easily recognized: Nos. 5, 9, 19, etc. The church, on the site of an eleventh-century chapel, dates from the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, with a nineteenth-century chapel and presbytery.
Avenue du Trocadéro, since 4th July, 1918, Avenue Wilson, was inaugurated as Avenue de l’Empereur, (Napoléon III). The palace, now a museum and concert-hall, was built on the crest of ancient quarries, for the Exhibition of 1878, and the Place du Roi de Rome, in previous days Place Ste-Marie, became Place du Trocadéro. The Musée Galliera, a museum of industrial art, was built in 1895 by the duchess whose maiden name Brignole is recorded in the short street opened across her property in 1879. She had planned filling it with her magnificent collection of pictures, but changed the destination of her legacy when France laicised her schools.
Avenue Henri-Martin began, like Avenue du Trocadéro, as Avenue de l’Empereur (1858). The old tour we see at No. 86 Rue de le Tour is said to have formed part of the Manor of Philippe-le-Bel. It was once a prison, then served as a windmill tower, and the street, erewhile Chemin des Moines, Monk’s Road, became Rue du Moulin de la Tour. Few other vestiges of the past remain along its course. We see old houses at Nos. 1, 66, 68. Rue Vineuse, crossing it, recalls the days when convent vineyards stretched there. It is, like Rue Franklin, once Rue Neuve des Minimes, of eighteenth-century date. Franklin’s statue was set up there in 1906, for his centenary. We see an old-time house at No. 1 Rue Franklin, and at No. 8 the home of Clemenceau, the capable Prime Minister of France of the late war. The cemetery above the reservoir was opened in 1803.
CHAPTER XLIV
TOWARDS THE WESTERN BOUNDARY
RUE DE PASSY, the ancient Grande Rue, the village High Street before the district was included within the Paris boundary-line, dates from fifteenth-century days, when it was a fief, owned by Jeanne de Paillard, known as La Dame de Passy; it reverted to the Crown under Louis XI, and was bestowed on successive nobles. At the carrefour—the cross roads—where the tramcars now stop for Rue de la Tour, stood the seignorial gallows. The seignorial habitation, a château with extensive grounds, was built in 1678; in 1826 the whole domain was sold and cut up. The district was known far and wide in past days on account of its mineral springs. Here and there along the street we see an ancient house still standing. The narrow impasse at No. 24 is ancient. The nineteenth-century poet Gustave Nadaud died at No. 63 in 1893. No. 84, now razed, showed, until a few years ago, an interesting Louis XV façade in the courtyard, once a dependency of the Château de la Muette. Rue de la Pompe, named from the pump which supplied the Château de la Muette with water, a country road in the eighteenth century, shows few vestiges of the past. No. 53 is part of an old Carmelite convent.
Chaussée de la Muette is a nineteenth-century prolongation of Rue de Passy. The château from which it takes its name was originally a hunting-lodge, stags and birds were carefully enclosed here during the time of moulting (la mue, hence the name) in the days of Charles IX. Margaret de Valois, the notorious Reine Margot, was its first regular inhabitant. She gave the mansion to King Louis XIII when he came of age in 1615. It was rebuilt by the Regent in 1716 and became the favourite abode of his daughter the duchesse de Berri. There she died three years later. It was the home of Louis XV during his minority. Mme de Pompadour lived there and had the doors beautifully painted. It was again rebuilt in 1764, Marie-Antoinette and the Dauphin, soon to be Louis XVI, spent the first months of their married life there. It was from the Park de la Muette that the first balloon was sent up in 1783. The property was cut up in 1791, and in 1820 bought by Sebastien Érard of pianoforte fame, and once more rebuilt. Thus it came by the spindle-side to the comte de Franqueville; a big slice has been cut off in recent years for the making of a new street named after its present owner.[G]
Avenue du Ranelagh records the existence, in the latter years of the eighteenth century, of the fashionable dancing hall and grounds opened here in imitation of the Rotonde built in London by Lord Ranelagh. Marie-Antoinette was among the great ladies who danced there. The hall was closed at the Revolution but was reopened and again the vogue under the Directoire and until 1830, when it became a public dancing saloon. It was demolished in 1858, the lawns were left to form a promenade. The statue of La Fontaine dates from 1891. Rue du Ranelagh is wholly modern. Rue Raynouard crossing it dates from the seventeenth century, when it was the Grande Rue, later the Haute Rue of the quarter, to become later still Rue Basse. Florian, the charming fable-writer, was wont to stay at No. 75. We see a fine old hôtel at No. 69, and an old-world street, Rue Guillou, close by. Rue des Vignes opening at No. 72 reminds us of the vineyards once on these sunny slopes. No. 66 was the site of the hôtel Valentinois, where Franklin lived for several years and where he put up the first lightning conductor in France. No. 51 is ancient, and No. 47 is known as la Maison de Balzac. In a pavilion in the garden sloping to the Seine he lived from 1842-48, lived and wrote, wrote incessantly there as elsewhere and always. There, carefully preserved, may be seen the chair he sat in, the table he wrote at, the pen he used, and a hundred other personal relics. Lectures about the great novelist and subjects connected with his life and work are given there from time to time. We see ancient houses on to the end of this quaint street. Marie-Antoinette stayed from time to time at No. 42 to be within easy reach of her confessor, the Vicar of Passy; so tradition says. The second story of this house sheltered Béranger, 1833-35. The man of letters who gave his name to the street died at No. 36, in 1836. At No. 21, the warrior, la Tour d’Auvergne, passed the years 1776-1800. Jean Jacques Rousseau stayed with friends here and wrote his “Devin du Village.” Mineral waters, such as made the springs of Passy renowned in bygone days, still bubble up in this fine park. The modern erection, No. 19, is on the site of the ancient hôtel Lauzun, where the duc de Saint-Simon used to stay, and where the first steps were taken for the marriage of Napoléon III. At No. 11 we turn for an instant into the quaint old Rue des Eaux, strikingly reminiscent of a past age, when the tonifying waters of Passy were drunk in a pavilion on the site of No. 20. Rue de l’Annonciation began in the early years of the eighteenth century as Rue des Moulins. Here we see the church Notre-Dame-de-Grâce, built as a chapel of ease for Auteuil by the Lord of Passy in 1660, to become a parish church, a few years later. It was restored and enlarged at subsequent dates. The ancient Passy cemetery lay across Rue Lekain. Rue de Boulainvilliers stretches through what were once the grounds of the Passy Château. Rue des Bauches, opening out of it, still narrow and quaint, was in olden days a lane through the Bauches, a word signifying a marshy tract or used to designate hut-like dwellings on waste, perhaps marshy land. Passy had within its bounds the Hautes Bauches, and the Basses Bauches. We of the 16th arrondissement know the street nowadays more especially as that of the tax-paying office.
Rue de l’Assomption marking the boundary between Passy and Auteuil began as Rue des Tombereaux. The convent of the Assomption is a modern building (1858), in an ancient park. The old château there, so secluded on its tree-surrounded site as to go by the name of l’Invisible, rebuilt in 1782, was for a time the home of Talleyrand, later of the actress Rachel, of Thiers, the statesman, of the comtesse de Montijo, mother of the Empress Eugénie; the nuns came here from Rue de Chaillot in 1855. No. 88 is an old convent-chapel used as chapel of ease for Passy.
In Avenue de Mozart we see modern structures only, but old-time streets open out of it at intervals. It was in a house in Rue Bois-le-Vent, near the château de la Muette, that André Chenier was arrested in 1794. Behind No. 13, of Rue Davioud we find traces of an old farmyard and a well. Rue de la Cure refers by its name to the iron springs once there. Rue de Ribéra is the ancient Rue de la Croix. Rue de la Source, was in old days Sente des Vignes. Benedictine nuns from St-Maur settled there in 1899 to be banished or laicized a few years later. Rue Raffet dates from the eighteenth century as Rue de la Grande Fontaine. Rue du Docteur Blanche, named to memorize the organizer of the well-known private asylum in the hôtel once the dwelling of princesse de Lamballe, is the ancient Fontis Road. Rue Poussin, and the short streets connected with it, all date from the middle of the nineteenth century, opened by the railway company of the Ceinture line in the vicinity of their station at Auteuil. Rue des Perchamps, once Pares Campi, crosses the site of the ancient cemetery of the district. In Rue la Fontaine, in olden days known for its fountain of pure water, we find here and there an eighteenth-century building among the garden-surrounded houses. In Rue Théophile Gautier, a tennis-court and tall houses let in flats cover the ground where till 1908 stood the Château de Choiseul-Praslin, in its latter years, till 1904, a convent of Dominican nuns. Rue de Remusat runs along the course of the ancient Grande Rue; Rue Félicien-David was the first street flooded in the great inundation of 1910.[H] The street became a river three mètres deep. Rue Wilhem, of so commonplace an aspect to-day, dates from the eighteenth century, when it was Sentier des Arches, then Rue Ste-Geneviève. Place d’Auteuil, until 1867 Place d’Aguesseau, is on the site of the churchyard of past days. The monument we see there was set up to the memory of D’Aguesseau and his wife by command of Louis XV, in 1753. This is the highest point in the district, altus locus—the origin, maybe, of the name Auteuil, unless the name refers rather to the Druidical altars erected on a clearing here in the days when the forest of Rouvray, spreading over the whole of what is now the Bois de Boulogne, sheltered the venerable pagan priests. A church was first built on the spot in the early years of the fourteenth century. At the Revolution the church was profaned, the tombs violated. The present edifice dates from the latter years of the nineteenth century; its tower, in the form of a pontifical tiara, is an exact copy of the ancient tower. Rue d’Auteuil was in fifteenth-century days the single village street, la Grande Rue; the house at No. 2 is said to be on the site of Molière’s country dwelling, but there is no authentic record of the exact site of the house at Auteuil, near the church, where the great dramatist so often went for rest and country air. Auteuil was the retreat for quiet and recuperation of the most noted men of letters and of art of the eighteenth century: Racine, Boileau, etc. No. 59 is on the site of the house, burnt to the ground in 1871, wherein Victor Noir was shot dead by Prince Pierre Napoléon. Where at the upper end of the street we see now houses of commonplace aspect and small shops, stood until the middle of the nineteenth century the Château du Coq, inhabited by Louis XV in his childhood, and surrounded later by a horticulturist’s garden.
Avenue de Versailles, in the south of the arrondissement, shows us along its line, and in the short streets leading out of it, many old-time vestiges. The Auteuil cemetery in Rue Chardon-Lagache dates from 1800. The house of retreat, Ste-Perine, transferred here from Chaillot in 1850, is on land once part of the estate of the abbots of the old monastery Ste-Geneviève, away on the high ground across the Seine at the other end of the city. Rue Molitor has at No. 18 a group of modern houses named Villa Boileau, property once owned by the poet. Boileau’s Auteuil house was on the site of No. 26, in the quaint picturesque old Rue Boileau, where his gardener’s cottage still stands. Rue de Musset, opening out of the street at No. 67, reminds us that the friend of George Sand dwelt here with his parents in the early years of the nineteenth century.
CHAPTER XLV
LES TERNES
ARRONDISSEMENT XVII. (BATIGNOLLES-MONCEAU)
A NUMBER of small dwellings lying without the city bounds to the north, in the commune of Clichy, were known in the fifteenth century as “les Batignolles,” i.e. the little buildings. Separated from Clichy in the nineteenth century, the district of les Batignolles was joined to Monceau. New streets were built, old erections swept away: Avenue de Clichy, in part the Grande Rue of the district, was first planted with trees in 1705. At intervals along its course, and in the short streets connected with it, we find eighteenth-century houses, none of special interest. At No. 3, the Taverne de Paris is decorated with paintings by modern artists. A famous restaurant, dating from 1793, stood till 1906 at No. 7. At No. 52 of Rue Balagny, opening out of the Avenue, we see the sign “Aux travailleurs,” and on the façade, words to the effect that the house was built during the war years 1870-71. At No. 154 of the Avenue, we find the quiet leafy Cité des Fleurs. Rue des Dames was a road leading to the abbey “des dames de Montmartre” in the seventeenth century. Rue de Lévis was in long-gone ages a road leading to what was then the village of Monceaux, its name derived perhaps from the Latin Muxcellum, a mossy place, more probably from Monticellum, a mound, or from Mons calvas, the bald or bare mount. The Château de Monceaux was on the site of Place Lévis. The official palace of the Papal Nuncio was in Rue Legendre, No. 11 bis. The modern church St-Charles we see here, built in 1907, was previously a Barnabite chapel. Rue Léon-Cosnard dates from the seventeenth century, when it was Rue du Bac d’Asnières. In the old Rue des Moines we find one of the few French protestant churches of Paris.
Avenue de Villiers, leading of old to the village of Villiers, now incorporated with Levallois-Perret, was, from its formation in 1858 to the year 1873, Avenue de Neuilly. Puvis de Chavannes died at No. 89, in 1898. Avenue de Wagram in its course from the Arc de Triomphe to Place des Ternes dates from the Revolution year 1789, known then as Avenue de l’Étoile. Avenue MacMahon began as Avenue du Prince Jerôme. Avenue des Ternes is the ancient route de St-Germain, subsequently known as the old Reuilly Road—Reuilly is half-way to St-Germain—later as Rue de la Montagne du Bon-Air, to become on the eve of its début as an Avenue, route des Ternes, the chief road of the terra externa, the territory beyond the city bounds on that side. The village Les Ternes was taken within the Paris boundary line in 1860. The barrière du Roule was surrounded in the past by a circular road, now Place des Ternes. We find important vestiges of the fine Château des Ternes in the neighbourhood of Rue Bayen, Rue Guersant and Rue Demours. The church St-Ferdinand built in 1844-47 was named in memory of the duc d’Orléans, killed near the spot.
CHAPTER XLVI
ON THE BUTTE
ARRONDISSEMENT XVIII. (BUTTE MONTMARTRE)
WE are on supremely interesting ground here, ground at once sacred, historic and characteristic of the mundane life of the city above which it stands. At or near its summit, St-Denis and his two companions were put to death in the early days of Christianity. On the hill-side most memorable happenings have been lived through. In the old streets and houses up and down its slopes poets and artists have ever dwelt, worked and played, and in its theatres, its music-halls, cabarets, etc., Parisians of all classes have sought amusement—good and evil. In past days Paris depended on Montmartre for its daily bread, for the flour that made it was ground by the innumerable windmills of the Butte. The sails of many of those windmills worked far into the reign of Napoléon III, who did not admire their aspect and even had a scheme for levelling the Butte! So it is said. Reaching the arrondissement by the Rue des Martyrs, which begins, as we know, in arrondissement IX, we come upon two buildings side by side of very opposite uses: the Comédie Mondaine, formerly the famous Brasserie des Martyrs and Divan Japonais, and the Asile Nationale de la Providence, an institution founded in 1804 as a retreat for aged and fallen gentlepeople.
The hôtel at No. 79 is on the site of the Château d’hiver, where the Revolutionists of Montmartre had their club. No. 88 was the dancing-saloon known as the Bossu. No. 76 that of the Marronniers. Rue Antoinette shows us points of interest of another nature. At No. 9, in the couvent des Dames Auxiliatrices du Purgatoire, we see the very spot on which there is reason to believe St. Denis and his companions suffered martyrdom. An ancient crypt is there, unearthed in the year 1611, to which we are led down rough steps, beneath a chapel built on the site in 1887; we see a rude altar and above it words in Latin to the effect that St-Denis had invoked the name of the Holy Trinity on that spot. The crypt is no doubt a vestige of the chapel built on the site by Ste-Geneviève. It was in this chapel, not as is sometimes asserted higher up the Butte, that Ignatius Loyola and his six companions, on August 15, 1574, made the solemn vow which resulted in the institution of the Order of the Jesuits. The chapel was under the jurisdiction of the “Dames de Montmartre,” and after the great fire at the abbey the nuns sought refuge in the old chapel here, made it a priory. Several persons of note were buried there. At the Revolution it was knocked to pieces and remained a ruin until rebuilt by the abbé Rebours in 1887.
Leaving this interesting spot and passing through Rue Tardieu, we reach Place St-Pierre, formerly known as Place Piemontési, and go on through Rue Foyatier to the ancient Rue St-Eleuthère, once in part of its length Rue du Pressoire, a name recalling the abbey winepress on the site of the reservoir we see there now. Thus we come to Rue Mont-Cenis, the ancient Chaussée St-Denis, and in part of its course, Rue de la Procession, referring to the religious processions of those bygone days. And here we see before us the most ancient of Paris churches, St-Pierre de Montmartre. It dates from the first years of the ninth century, built on the site of an earlier chapel or several successive chapels, the first one erected over the ruins of a pagan temple. Four black marble pillars from the ruins of that temple were used for the Christian church: we see them there to-day, two at the west door, two in the chancel. We see there, too, ancient tombstones, one that of Adelaide de Savoie, foundress of the abbey, for the Choir des Dames was the abbey chapel, and there the abbesses were buried. The old church was threatened with destruction after the desecration of 1871, when it was used as a munition dépôt. Happily it has been saved and in recent years restored. The façade is eighteenth-century work, quite uninteresting as we see, but the view of the east end from without, the apse, the old tower and the simply severe Gothic interior, are strikingly characteristic. The cross we see in front of the church was brought here from an old cemetery near. The garden adjoining, with the Calvaire set up there in 1833, was in ancient days the nun’s graveyard. The cemetery on the northern side dates from the time of the Merovingian kings.
Leaving the most ancient of Paris churches we come to the most remarkable among the modern churches of Paris and of France—l’Église du Vœu National, commonly known as the Sacré-Cœur. It is an impressively historic structure for it was built after the disasters of 1870-71, by “La France humiliée et repentante,” a votive church erected by national subscription. To make its foundations sure on the summit of the Butte, chosen as being the site of the martyrdom of St-Denis, patron saint of the city, the hill was probed to its base, almost to the level of the Seine, and a gigantic foundation of hard rock-like stone built upwards. The huge edifice rests upon a vast crypt, with chapels and passages throughout its entire extent. It has taken more than forty years to build; the north tower was finished just before the outbreak of the war, now advancing to a triumphal end, for which grand services of thanksgiving will ere long be held in this church built after defeat. The interior is still uncompleted. Looking at it from close at hand, the immense Byzantine structure with its numerous domes, seems to us æsthetically somewhat unsatisfying, but from a distance dominating Paris, seen as it often is through a feathery haze, or with the sun shining on it, the vast white edifice makes an imposing effect. Its great bell, la Savoyarde, given by the diocese of Chambéry, weighs more than 26,000 kilogrammes, and its sound reaches many miles.
VIEUX MONTMARTRE, RUE ST-VINCENT
(Maison de Henri IV)
RUE MONT-CENIS
(Chapelle de la Trinité)
Rue Chevalier de la Barre, bordering the church on the north, was formerly in part of its length Rue des Rosiers, in part Rue de la Fontenelle, referring to a spring in the vicinity. In a wall of the Abri St-Joseph at No. 26, we see the bullet-holes made by the Communards who shot there two French Generals in March, 1871. Going up Rue Mont-Cenis we see interesting old houses at every step. No. 22 was the home of the musician Berlioz and his English wife Constance Smithson. Crossing this long street from east to west at this point, the winding hill-side Rue St-Vincent with its ancient walls, its trees, its grassy roadway, makes us feel very far removed from the city lying in the plain below. At No. 40 is the little cemetery St-Vincent. Returning to Rue Mont-Cenis we find at No. 53 a girls’ college amid vestiges of the ancient, famous porcelaine factory, the factory of “Monsieur” under the patronage of the comte de Provence, brother of Louis XV. The tower we see there was that of the windmill which ground the silex. At No. 61 we come upon a farm dating from 1782, la Vacherie de la Tourelle. At No. 67 an old inn once the Chapelle de la Trinité (sixteenth century).
VIEUX MONTMARTRE
(Cabaret du Lapin-Agile)
Returning to the vicinity of St-Pierre and the Sacré-Cœur, we find numerous short streets, generally narrow and tortuous, which retain their old-world aspect. Rue St-Eleuthère is one of the most ancient. Rue St-Rustique formerly Rue des Dames, Rue Ravignan once Rue du Vieux-Chemin, Rue Cortot, Rue Norvins, Rue des Saules, are all seventeenth-century thoroughfares. Rue Norvins was Rue des Moulins in bygone days. No. 23 was a far-famed folie, then, in 1820, the celebrated Dr. Blanche founded there his first asylum for the insane, many of whom he cured. At No. 9 we come to an old house and alley, the impasse Trainée, a name recalling the days when Montmartre was, in wintry weather, a wolf-haunted district: a trainée is a wolf-trap. The inn at No. 6 was in the past a resort of singers in search of an engagement: the impecunious could bring food to eat there. On the Place du Tertre two trees of liberty were planted in 1848, felled in 1871. No. 3 is the site of the first Mairie of Montmartre. Passing along Rue du Calvaire we come to the rustic Place du Calvaire, erewhile Place Ste-Marie.
A very chief interest at Montmartre is the view. It is best obtained from the Belvedere built by baron de Vaux at No. 39 Rue Gabrielle, and from the Moulin de la Galette reached through Rue des Trois-Frères. Rue de la Mire was in olden days Petite Rue des Moulins. The steps we see are said to have been put there for the passage of cattle.
The cellars of the house at No. 7, Rue la Vieuville are vestiges of the ancient abbey. Place des Abbesses was erewhile Rue de l’Abbaye. On the ancient place we find the most modern and most modern-style church in Paris, St-Jean l’Evangeliste, built of concrete. The Passage des Abbesses leads by an old flight of steps to Rue des Trois-Frères, a modern street. Rue Lepic, for some years after its formation Rue de l’Empereur (Napoléon III), was renamed in memory of the General who defended the district in 1814. Numerous old streets are connected with it. Avenue des Tilleuls recalls the days when lime-trees flourished there, the lime-trees memorized in Alphonse Karr’s novel Sous les Tilleuls. In the Square where it ends is an eighteenth-century house where François Coppée dwelt as a boy. The severely wall-enclosed hôtel at No. 72 was the home of the artist Ziem. Close here is the entrance to the Moulin de la Galette. At the top of the house No. 100 there is an astronomical observatory set up under Napoléon III. The Rue Girardon, a rural pathway in the seventeenth century, was known later as Rue des Brouillards, the point no doubt from which the city lying below was to be seen fog-enveloped, as is not unfrequently the case. The old house No. 13 goes by the name le Château des Brouillards. In the impasse at No. 5 stood in ancient days the Fontaine St-Denis. Its waters were of great repute, assuring, it was said, in women who drank them, the virtue of conjugal fidelity. And here through the short street Rue des Deux-Frères we reach the historic Moulin de la Galette. It dates from the twelfth century and has seen tragic days. Its owners defended it with frantic courage in 1814, whereupon one of them, taken by the attacking Cosaques, was roped to the whirling wheel. It was again assailed in 1871. The property was owned by the same family from the year 1640, a private property, a farm, a country inn, where dancing often went on as a mere private pastime till, in 1833, its landlord, an expert in the art of dancing, decided to turn his talent to pecuniary account and opened there the famous public dancing-hall. Rue Caulaincourt, erewhile quaint and rural, has lost of late years almost all its old-time characteristics. Rue Lamarck has become quite modern in its aspect. Rue Marcadet was known in the seventeenth century as Rue des Bœufs—Ox Street. At No. 71 we find a fine seventeenth-century hôtel, now a girls’ school, hôtel Labat, and another good old house, also a girls’ school, at No. 75; at No. 91 yet another. The modern structures at No. 101 are on the site of the ancient manor-house of Clignancourt. The turret at No. 103 is probably the relic of an old windmill. Rue de la Fontaine du But records the name of a drinking fountain, demolished some forty years ago, said to have been set up there by the Romans. Tradition has it the word but was once buc, and referred to the Roman rite of the sacrifice of a buck to Mercury. According to another legend, “but,” i.e. aim, referred to the English archers who when in France made that spot their practising-ground. Rue du Ruisseau owes its name to the stream of water which flowed through it on the demolition of the ancient fountain. The seventeenth-century Rue de Maistre, bordering the northern cemetery, is the ancient Chemin des Dames. Rue Eugène-Carrière, opening out of it, was till quite recently Rue des Grandes Carrières, memorizing the big quarries whence from time immemorial has been obtained the white stone, so marked a feature of Paris buildings, and the world-famed plaster of Paris.
Rue Damrémont is modern; in the little Rue des Cloys opening out of it at No. 102 we see vestiges of a curious old cité of wooden dwellings. Rue Neuve de la Chardonnière recalls the days when it was a thistle-grown road. Rue du Poteau reminds us of the gallows of the St-Ouen road. The Avenue de Clichy and the Avenue St-Ouen which form the boundary of the arrondissement, both date back as important roads to the seventeenth century. Along them we find here and there traces of ancient buildings, none of special interest. To the east of the boulevards Ornano and Barbes, which run through the arrondissement from north to south, we find numerous ancient streets, mostly short. The street of chief importance is Rue des Poissonniers, its lower end merged in boulevard Barbes. We see several unimportant old houses along its course. The impasse du Cimetière and the schools we see there are on the site of an old graveyard. In Rue Affre, bearing the name of the archbishop of Paris slain on the barricades in 1848 (see p. 250), we find the modern church St-Bernard, of pure fifteenth-century Gothic as to style, but far inferior in workmanship to the Gothic structures of ages past. Rue de la Chapelle, known in Napoléon’s time as Faubourg de la Gloire, began as the Calais Road, then became the Grande Rue de la Chapelle. La Chapelle is a spot of remarkable historic memories. It began as the Village des Roses—in days when roses, wild and cultivated, grew in abundance in what is now a Paris slum. Then the population, remembering that Ste-Geneviève had stopped to rest and pray in the church on her way to St-Denis, called their village La Chapelle-Ste-Geneviève. Later it was named la Chapelle-St-Denis. To the church at la Chapelle went Jeanne d’Arc in the fateful year 1425. We find ancient houses all along the course of this old thoroughfare, and at No. 96 the church dedicated to St-Denis, built by Maurice de Sully, the chancel of that thirteenth-century structure still intact, after going through two disastrous fires and suffering damage in times of war. It has been enlarged in recent years. The statue of Jeanne d’Arc there dates from the reign of Louis XVI.
A popular fair, la Foire de Lendit, instituted by Dagobert, was held during centuries at the extreme end of the ancient thoroughfare. No. 122, built, tradition tells us, by Henri IV and given to his minister Sully, became in the seventeenth century the Cabaret de la Rose Blanche. At No. 1 Rue Boucry we see an ancient chapel now used as a public hall.
CHAPTER XLVII
AMONG THE COALYARDS AND THE MEAT-MARKETS
ARRONDISSEMENT XIX. (BUTTES-CHAUMONT)
IN this essentially workaday district we see many houses old and quaint, but without architectural beauty or special historic interest. Round the park des Buttes-Chaumont, a large expanse of greenswards and shady alleys, dull, squalid streets branch out amid coal-yards and factories. Beneath the park are the ancient quarries which erewhile gave so much white stone and plaster of Paris to the city builders. The name Chaumont is derived, perhaps, from mons calvus, mont chauve, i.e. bald mountain. In Rue de Flandres, formerly Grande Rue de la Villette, we see a Jewish cemetery. Nos. 61 to 65 are on the site where the well-known institution Ste-Perine, come hither from Compiègne, was first established in Paris as a convent community in the seventeenth century, removed to Chaillot in 1742, then to Auteuil, its present site. We find ancient houses, some old signs, along the course of this old street, and at No. 152 an interesting door, pavilion and bas-relief.
Rue de Belleville marks the bounds of the arrondissement. Along its course and in the adjacent streets we see many vestiges of the past. Rue des Bois shows us some fine old gardens as yet undisturbed. In Rue de l’Orme, Elm Road, opening out of it, we find the remains of an ancient park. Rue Pré-St-Gervais was a country road till 1837. From the top of the steps in the picturesque Rue des Lilas we have a fine view across the neighbouring banlieue. In the grounds of No. 40 we come upon three benches formed of gravestones. Rue Compans was in the eighteenth century and onwards Rue St-Denis. The church of St-Jean-Baptiste, quite modern, is of excellent style and workmanship. The lower end of Rue de Belleville leads us into arrondissement XX.
CHAPTER XLVIII
PÈRE-LACHAISE
ARRONDISSEMENT XX. (MÉNILMONTANT)
THE lower end of the long Rue de Belleville, its odd-number side in arrondissement XIX, went in olden days by the name Rue des Courtilles—Inn Street. Inns, cabarets, popular places of amusement stood door by door all along its course. Here, as in arrondissement XIX, we find on every side old houses and vestiges of the past, but of no particular interest beyond the quaintness of their aspect. Rue Pelleport began in the eighteenth century as an avenue encircling the park of Ménilmontant. In the grounds surrounding the reservoirs we come upon a tomb, a modern gravestone, covering the remains of a municipal functionary whose dying wish was to be buried on his own estate.
Rue Haxo, crossing Rue Belleville at No. 278 and running up into arrondissement XIX, is of tragic memory. Opening out of it at No. 85 we see the Villa des Otages. There the Commune sat in 1871, there the fate of the hostages was decided; there on the 26th May, 1871, fifty-two of those unhappy prisoners were slain. The Jesuits owned the property till its sale a few years ago. They bought and carried away the grilles and whatever else was transportable from the cells where the victims had been shut up.
Rue Ménilmontant, running parallel to Rue de Belleville, dates from the seventeenth century, when it was a country road leading to the thirteenth-century hamlet Mesnil Mantems, later Mesnil Montant. The land there belonged in great part to the abbey St-Antoine and to the priory of Ste-Croix de la Bretonnerie; a château de Ménilmontant was built, under Louis XIV, where in the wide-stretching grounds we see the reservoirs. At Nos. 155 and 157 we see old pavilions surrounded by gardens. The eighteenth-century house, No. 145, was in the nineteenth century taken by a society calling itself the St-Simoniens—some forty men who had decided to live together and have all things in common. They did not remain together long. No. 119 is the school directed by the Sœurs St-Vincent de Paul. At No. 101 we look down Rue des Cascades which till the middle of last century was a country lane: leading out of it is the old Rue de Savies, recording the ancient name of the district—Savies, i.e. montagne sauvage—wild mountain—a name changed later to Portronville (rather a mouthful), then to its euphonious present name Belleville. At its summit is an ancient fountain set there in long-past ages for the use of the monks of St-Martin of Cluny, and for the Knights-Templar; another may be seen in the grounds of No. 17.
On the Place de Ménilmontant we see the well-built modern church Notre-Dame-de-la-Croix, on its northern side the old Rue and passage Eupatoria. The quaint Rue de la Mare, a country road in the seventeenth century, and Rue des Couronnes have interesting old passages running into them.
Passing down Rue des Pyrénées, connected on either side with short old-time streets and passages, we come to the Square Gambetta, often called Square Père-Lachaise, and the immense Paris cemetery, the great point of interest of the 20th arrondissement. The site was known in long-past days as the Champ de l’Evêque—the bishop’s field. It was presently put to a very unecclesiastical use, for a rich grocer bought the land and built thereon a folie, i.e. an extravagant mansion. In the seventeenth century the Jesuits bought the property and named it Mont-Louis. Louis XIV paid a visit to the Jesuits there and subsequently bought the estate and gave it to his confessor, Père Lachaise. When Père Lachaise died the Jesuits regained the property, held it till the Revolution, when it was seized by the State and became the possession of the Municipality. Passing along the avenues and alleys of this vast, silent city on the hill-side, we see tombs of every possible description and style, wonderful monuments and mortuary chapels, some very beautiful, others ...! and a huge crematorium. Men and women of many nations and of many varying creeds are gathered there. Seen on the eve of All Saints’ Day or the day following, when fresh flowers are on every grave, lamps burning in almost every tombstone chapel, the relatives and the friends of the dead crowding in reverent attitude along its paths, the scene is singularly impressive.
On its north-east boundary we find the tragic Mur des Fédérés, the wall against which the insurgents were shot after the Commune in 1871. Blood-red scarves, blood-red wreaths mark the graves there, and we see the names of many who had no graves on that spot chalked up against that tragic wall.
On the south side of the cemetery, running eastward, we turn into the old Rue de Bagnolet, the road leading to the village of the name. Old houses line this street and the streets adjoining it, and half-way up its incline on the little Place St-Blaise we see the ancient church St-Germain de Charonne, dating from the eleventh century. An inscription on a wall within tells us Germain, the busy bishop of Auxerre, first met Geneviève of Nanterre here, and tradition says the future patron saint of Paris took her vows on the spot. There was an oratory on the site in the fifth century or little later. The eleventh-century edifice was rebuilt in the fifteenth century, but we still see some of the blackened walls of the earlier structure. The chevet, i.e. the chancel-end, was destroyed in the wars of the Fronde. We see, distinctly traced, the space it occupied bounded by the Mur des Sœurs, against which in long-gone days were no doubt stalls for the nuns of a neighbouring convent. Some ancient tombstones, too, are there, once within the chancel. Mounting the broad steps we enter the old church to find curious old pillars, ancient inscriptions, coats of arms, and in one chapel a little good old glass.
Making our way to the little cemetery of Charonne behind, we find in its centre a grass-grown space once the fosse commune of the pits into which the guillotinés were flung in Revolution days. Beyond, near the boundary wall, we see a railed-in tomb, surmounted by the figure of a man in Louis XVIII costume—Bègue, Robespierre’s private secretary. The Revolution over, his chief dead, the man whose hand had prepared for signature so many tragic documents withdrew to the rural district of Charonne, beyond the Paris bounds, led a secluded, peaceful life, cultivated his bit of land and set about preparing for his exit from this earth by designing his own tomb. He sat for the bronze statue we see here, and had the iron railing made to show all the implements of Revolutionary torture with which he was familiar, the wheel that worked the guillotine, the tenailles, etc....!
Higher up towards Bagnolet we come to a vestige of the ancient Château, a pavilion Louis XV, forming part of the modern Hospice Debrousse.
CHAPTER XLIX
BOULEVARDS—QUAYS—BRIDGES
THE BOULEVARDS
THE Paris boulevards are one of the most characteristic features of the city. The word boulevard recalls the days when Paris was fortified, surrounded by ramparts, and the city boulevards stretch for the most part along the lines of ancient boundary walls, boundaries then, now lines in many instances cutting through the very heart of the Paris we know.
The Grands Boulevards run from the Place de la Madeleine to the Place de la Bastille—gay and smart and modern, in the first kilometres of their course; less smart, busier, more commercial, with more abundant vestiges of bygone days as they stretch out beyond the boulevard des Italiens.
The boulevard de la Madeleine follows the line of the ancient boundary wall of Louis XIII, razed during the first years of the eighteenth century. Its upper part on the even-number side was one side of an old thoroughfare reaching as far as Rue de la Chaussée d’Antin, known in its early years as Rue Basse du Rempart. The latter part stretching to Rue Caumartin is of recent date. The old Rue Basse des Remparts was bordered by handsome hôtels, the dwellings of notable persons of the day: vestiges of several of them were until recent years still seen in boulevard des Capucines—Nos. 16 to 22 razed when the new street Rue Édouard VII was cut. In the reception-room of a seventeenth-century house that stood at the corner of the boulevard and the Rue des Capucines known as the Colonnade, Buonaparte first met Joséphine.
Boulevard des Italiens gained its name from the Italian theatre there in 1783. This name was changed more than once in subsequent years. After the Revolution, when the Royalists who had taken refuge beyond the German Rhine returned to Paris and held meetings on this boulevard, it was nicknamed “Le Petit Coblentz.” No. 33 (eighteenth century) is the Pavillon de Hanovre, forming part in past times of the hôtel d’Antin, which had been owned in its later days by Richelieu, then was divided into several dwellings, and in the time of the Merveilleuses one of these sub-divisions of the fine old mansion became a dancing saloon, bal Richelieu, and the meeting-place of the Incroyables. Rue du Helder, which we see opening at No. 36, was in those days a cul-de-sac, i.e. a blind alley. The bank there (No. 7) was erewhile the famous cabaret “le Lion d’Or,” and at No. 2 Cavaignac was arrested when Napoléon made his coup d’état. No. 22 of the boulevard was the far-famed “Tortoni.” No. 20, rebuilt in 1839, now a post office, is the ancient hôtel Stainville, later Maison Dorée. No. 16, till a year or two ago Café Riche, dating from 1791. No. 15, hôtel de Lévis, was once the Jockey Club. On the site of No. 13 stood till recent years the famous Café Anglais. At No. 11 was the club “Salon des Italiens” in the time of Louis XVI, subsequently the restaurant Nicolle and Café du Grand Balcon, its first story commonly known as Salon des Princes. At No. 9 Grétry lived from 1795 till his death, which happened at Montmorency in 1813. No. 1 Café Cardinal founded by Dangest (eighteenth century).
Boulevard Montmartre dates from the seventeenth century, lined in olden days on both sides by handsome private mansions; we see it now a thoroughly commercial thoroughfare, one of the busiest in the city. A modern journalist called its carrefour—the point where it meets the Rue du Faubourg Montmartre—“carrefour des écrasés.” From the house, now a newspaper office, at No. 22 an underground passage ran in past days to the Café Cardinal opposite, leading to an orangery. On the site of No. 23 stood the gambling-house Frascati, built on the site of the old hôtel Taillepied. The Café Véron at No. 13 dates from 1818, opened through the gardens of the hôtel Montmorency-Luxembourg. Passage Jouffroy at No. 10 was cut, in 1846, across the site of an ancient building known as the Maison des Grands Artistes. The théâtre des Variétés, at No. 7, first set up at the Palais-Royal in 1770 by “la Montansier,” was built here in 1807 on the grounds of the hôtel Montmorency-Luxembourg. No. 1 is the site of the Café de la Porte Montmartre, founded by Louis XV, a meeting-place of Parisians hailing from Orléans, nicknamed Guépins.
Boulevard Poissonnières (seventeenth century) begins where hung till recent years an ancient sign at No. 1—“Aux limites de la Ville de Paris”—recording the inscription once on the old wall there. Most of the houses are those originally built along the boulevard, and many old streets run into it on either side. At No. 9 we see Rue St-Fiacre, dating from 1630, when it was Rue du Figuier, a street closed at each end by gates till about 1800. The restaurant Duval at No. 10 of the boulevard was an eighteenth-century mansion. No. 14 is known as Maison du Pont-de-Fer. No. 19, now l’École Pratique du Commerce, was till a few years ago the home of an old lady who, left a widow after one happy year of married life, shut herself up in the house she owned, refused to let any of its six large flats, and died there in utter solitude at the age of ninety. No. 23, designed by Soufflot le Romain in 1775 as a private mansion, became later the dépôt of the famous Aubusson tapistry.
Boulevard Bonne-Nouvelle, named from the church Notre-Dame de Bonne-Nouvelle in Rue de la Lune, dates from the seventeenth century (see p. 59). No. 21 was built after the Revolution with the stones of the old demolished church St-Paul (see p. 12). No. 11, in 1793, with some of the stones of the Bastille. The theatre, le Gymnase, which we see at No. 38, erected in 1820 on the grounds of a mansion, a barracks and a bit of an old graveyard, was known during some years as the théâtre de Madame la duchesse de Berri, who had taken it under her patronage. Its façade was rebuilt in 1887.
The church just off the boulevard was first built in 1624 on the site of the old chapel Ste-Barbe, and named by Anne d’Autriche, perhaps in gratitude for the good news of the prospect of the birth of a son (Louis XIV) after twenty-three years of childless married life, or, as has been said, on account of a piece of good news communicated to the Queen when passing by the spot. The edifice was rebuilt in the nineteenth century, the tower alone remaining untouched. Within it we find an old painting of Anne d’Autriche and Henriette of England.
Boulevard St-Denis (eighteenth century). The fine Porte St-Denis shows in bas-relief, the victories of Louis XIV in Germany and in Holland. It has been restored three times since its first erection in 1673. The Revolutions of 1830 and 1848 began around this grand old Porte. Paving-stones were hurled from its summit. At No. 19 we see a statue of St-Denis.
Boulevard St-Martin (seventeenth century). Its course was marked out, its trees planted a few years earlier than that of boulevard St-Denis. On its handsome blackened Porte, built in 1674-75, we read the words: “A Louis-le-Grand pour avoir pris deux fois Besançon et vaincu les Armées allemandes, espagnoles et hollandaises.” Like Porte St-Denis, it has been three times restored. The Allies passed beneath it on entering Paris in 1814. The first théâtre de la Porte St-Martin was built in the short period of seventy-five days to replace, with the least delay possible, the Opera-house near the Palais-Royal, burnt down in 1781. It was the Opera until 1793. The structure we see was erected in 1873, after the disastrous conflagration caused by the Communards two years previously. We see theatres and concert-halls along the whole course of the boulevard. The Ambigu at No. 2 dating from 1828 was founded sixty years earlier as a marionnette show on the site of the present Folies Dramatiques. This part of the boulevard was formerly on a steep incline, with steps up to the théâtre Porte St-Martin. Its ground was levelled in 1850. The novelist Paul de Kock lived at No 8. No. 17 was the abode of the great painter Meissonnier. The théâtre de la Renaissance is modern (1872), built on the site of the famous restaurant Deffieux which had flourished there for 133 years. It was for several years Sarah Bernhardt’s theatre.
Boulevard du Temple, its trees first planted in the year 1668 when it was a road stretching right across the area now known as Place de la République, was at that particular point a centre of places of amusement of every description—theatres, music-halls, marionnette-shows. All were closed, razed to the ground, to make way for the grand new place laid out there in 1862. Of the old walls within which Parisians had for long years previously found so much distraction and merriment, vestiges remain only at Nos. 48, 46, 44, 42 of the boulevard. No. 42 is on the site of the house where Fieschi’s infernal machine was placed in 1835. The restaurant at No. 29 is on the site of the once widely known Café du Jardin Turc. The théâtre Dejazet records the name of the famous actrice. The two short streets, Rue de Crussol and Rue du Grand Prieuré, were cut across the grounds of the Grand Prieuré de France in the latter years of the eighteenth century.
Boulevard Filles-du-Calvaire, named from the ancient convent, dates only from 1870. The streets connected with it are older. Rue des Filles-du-Calvaire was a thoroughfare in the last years of the seventeenth century, and at No. 13 we find traces of the ancient convent. Rue Froissard and Rue des Commines, memorizing the two old French chroniclers, were opened in 1804 right across the site of the convent and its grounds. Rue St-Sébastien dates back to the early years of the seventeenth century, and we see there many interesting old houses. No. 19, with its Gothic vaulting, is probably the hôtel d’Ormesson de Noyseau, a distinguished nobleman, guillotined at the Revolution. Rue du Pont-aux-Choux, made in the sixteenth century across market gardens, got its name from an old bridge which spanned a drain there.
Boulevard Beaumarchais began in 1670 as boulevard St-Antoine. No. 113, a sixteenth-century structure, was known till 1850 as the Château. The words we see engraved on its walls—“A la Petite Chaise”—refer to a tragic incident. The head of the princesse de Lamballe, carried by the Revolutionists on a pike, was plunged into a pail of water set on a low chair placed up against this wall to clear it of the dribbling blood. No. 99, its big doors brought here from the Temple palace, is the hôtel de Cagliostro, the famous sorcerer.
Rue des Arquebusiers, opening at No. 91, dates from 1720, when it was Rue du Harlay-au-Marais. Santerre lived here for a time. No. 2 stands on the site of the house where Beaumarchais died in 1790.
Boulevard Henri IV is modern (1866), cut across the site of two old convents. Rue Castex leads out of it where stood once the convent des Filles de Ste-Marie; its chapel, now a Protestant church, is entered at No. 5. The Caserne des Célestins was built in 1892 on the site of part of the large and celebrated convent of the Célestins, an Order founded in 1244 by the priest who became Pope Celestin V. The Carmelites who at first were established here, greatly disturbed by inundations from the Seine who overflowed her banks in those long-past ages, even as she does to-day, quitted their quarters on this site. The Célestins who came to Paris in 1352 and took over these abandoned dwellings were protected and enriched by Charles V, inhabiting the Palais St-Pol close by. The Order was suppressed in 1778, before the Revolution suppressed all Orders—for the time; and in 1785 the convent here was taken for the first deaf and dumb institution organized by abbé de l’Épée. The convent chapel with its numerous royal tombs, the bodies of some royal personages, the hearts of others, was razed in 1849. Some vestiges of the convent walls remained standing till 1904. Where the boulevard meets the Quai des Célestins, we see now a circular group of worn, ivy-grown stones; an inscription tells us these old stones once formed part of the Tour de la Liberté of the demolished Bastille. They were unearthed in making the Paris Metropolitan Railway a few years ago. The birds make the remnant of that old tower of liberty their own to-day and passers-by stop regularly to feed them.
Crossing the Seine we come to the boulevard St-Germain, beginning at boulevard Sully in arrondissement V, stretching right through arrondissement VI and ending at the Quai d’Orsay near the Chambre des Députés in arrondissement VII. Though in name so historic and running across interesting ground, the boulevard is of modern formation. It has swept away a whole district of ancient streets. The Nos. 61 to 49 are ancient, all that remains of Rue des Noyers erewhile there. At No. 67 Alfred de Musset was born (1810). The théâtre de Cluny is on the site of part of the vanished couvent des Mathurins. The firm Hachette stands where was once a Jews’ cemetery. No. 160 was the restaurant now razed where Thackeray, when a young student at the Beaux-Arts, took his meals. A sign-board he painted long hung there. We see some old houses of the ancient Rue des Boucheries between Nos. 162 and 148. At No. 166 we turn for an instant into Rue de l’Échaudé, dating from the fourteenth century, when it was a chemin along the abbey moat, a street of ancient houses. The word échaudé, a confectioner’s term used for a certain kind of three-cornered cake, signifies in topographical language a triangle formed by the junction of three streets. The pavement-stones before Nos. 137 to 135 cover the site of the ancient abbey prison. Rue des Ciseaux bordered in olden days the Collège des Écossais. The statue of Diderot at No. 170 was set up on his centenary as close as could be to the house he dwelt in, in Rue de l’Égout. The hôtel Taranne records the name of the thirteenth-century street of which some vestiges remain on the odd-number side of the boulevard between No. 175 and Place St-Germain-des-Prés, where Saint-Simon lived and wrote. The little grassy square round the house at No. 186 was originally a leper’s burial-ground, then, from 1576 to 1604, a Protestant cemetery. Looking into the Rue St-Thomas-d’Aquin, once passage des Jacobins, we see the church which began early in the years of the eighteenth century as a Jacobin convent. At the Revolution it was made into a Temple of Peace! The frescoes of the ceiling are by Lemoine.
The modern boulevard Raspail opening at No. 103 brought about the destruction of several ancient streets; where the boulevard St-Germain meets Rue St-Dominique three or four fine old mansions were razed to the ground and that old street, previously extending to Rue des Saints-Pères, cut short here. A fine eighteenth-century hôtel stood till 1861 on the site of the Bureaux du Ministère des Travaux Publics at No. 244. The minister’s official residence at No. 246, dating from 1722, is on the site of one still older, at one time the abode of the dowager duchess of Orleans. That portion of the Ministère de la Guerre which we see along this boulevard is a modern construction. We see modern structures also at Nos. 280, 282, 284, all on the site of fine old hôtels demolished at the making of the boulevard. At some points of boulevard Raspail, stretching from boulevard St-Germain to beyond the cemetery Montparnasse, we come upon vestiges of the ancient streets demolished to make way for it; here and there an old house, a fine doorway, and at No. 112 a lusty tree, its trunk protruding through the garden wall, said to be the tree beneath whose shade Victor Hugo sat and pondered or maybe wrote several of his best-known works, while living in an old house close by.
Starting now from the Place de la République, we pass up the busy modern boulevard Magenta without finding any point of special interest. The Cité du Wauxhall at No. 6 was opened in 1840 on the grounds of a more ancient Wauxhall. The big hospital Lariboisière in the adjoining Rue Ambroise-Parée was built from 1839 to 1848, on the clos St-Lazare and named at first Hôpital Louis-Philippe. Its present name is in memory of the countesse la Riboisière, who gave three million francs for the hospital. The boulevards Barbes and Ornano run on from boulevard Magenta to the district of Montmartre. They are of nineteenth-century formation and without historic interest. No. 10, boulevard Barbes, was once the dancing saloon “du Grand Turc.”
The bustling boulevard de Strasbourg which boulevard Magenta crosses, a continuation of the no less bustling boulevard Sébastopol, both great commercial thoroughfares, was formed in the middle of the nineteenth century across the lines of many ancient streets and courts. Ancient streets ran also where we now have the broad boulevard du Palais on l’Ile de la Cité, crossing the spot on the erewhile Place du Palais where of yore criminals were set out for public view and marked with a red-hot iron.
The buildings we see there on the odd-number side opposite the Palais de Justice: the Tribunal du Commerce, the Préfecture de Police, the Firemen’s barracks, are all of nineteenth-century erection. So we come to the boulevard St-Michel, the far-famed “Boule-Miche” of the Latin Quarter, forming the boundary-line between arrondissements V and VI. As a boulevard it is not of ancient date. It began at its northernly end in 1855 as boulevard Sébastopol, Rive Gauche. Soon it was prolonged and renamed to memorize the ancient chapel erewhile in one of the streets it had swept away. Place St-Michel from which it starts has to-day a modern aspect. Almost all traces of the ancient Place du Pont St-Michel, as it was in bygone days, have vanished. The huge fountain we see and cannot admire, though perhaps we ought to, replaces the fountain of 1684. The arched entrance to the narrow street Rue de l’Hirondelle, once Irondelle, as an old inscription tells us, which began in 1179 as Rue de l’Arondale-en-Laas, and the glimpse at a little distance of the entrance to ancient streets on the boulevard St-Germain side, give the only old-world touch to the place. The high blackened walls we see in this Rue de l’Hirondelle are the remains of the ancient collège d’Autun founded in 1341. At No. 20, on the site of the ancient hôtel of the bishops of Chartres, is an eighteenth-century hôtel. No. 38 of the boulevard is on the site of the house belonging to the Cordeliers, whose monastery was near by, where the royal library was kept from the days of Louis XIII to 1666. The Lycée St-Louis, founded in 1280 as the college d’Harcourt, covers the site of several ancient structures. A fragment—the only one known—of the boundary wall of Henri II, is within the college grounds, and beneath them the remains of a Roman theatre were found in 1861, and more remains in 1908. Where the boulevard meets Rue Monsieur-le-Prince, the city wall and a gate of Philippe-Auguste passed in olden days. And that was the site of the ancient place. No. 60, the École des Mines founded in 1783, and housed at the Mint, at that time an hôtel Rue de l’Université, then transferred to Montiers in Savoie, finally settled here in 1815 in the hôtel Vendôme built in 1707 for the Chartreux, let in 1714 to the duchesse de Vendôme, who died there soon afterwards. This fine old structure still forms the central part of the Mining School. At No. 62 we see the Geological Map offices. In the court of No. 64 we find a house built by the Chartreux, inhabited in past days by the marquis de Ségur, and in later times by Leconte de Lisle. The railway station Gare de Sceaux at No. 66 covers the site of the once well-known Café Rouge. In the old Rue Royer-Collard opening at No. 71, in the sixteenth century Rue St-Dominique d’Enfer, we see several quaint old houses. Roman pots were found some years ago beneath the pavement of the impasse. The house at No. 91 is on ground once within the cemetery St-Jacques. César Franck the composer lived and died at No. 95 (1891). No. 105 is the site of the ancient Noviciat des Feuillants who went by the name “anges guardiens.” The famous students’ dancing saloon known as bal Bullier was at this end of the boulevard from 1848 till a few years ago.