The Rue Saint-Antoine contains certain handsome mansions: the Cossé mansion, where Quélus died; the Mayenne and Ormesson mansion, built by du Cerceau on the remains of the Saint-Paul mansion and Germain Pilon's studio; the Sully mansion, whose noble front was not long ago mutilated. Hard by, at the corner of the Rue du Figuier and the picturesque Rue de l'Hôtel de Ville, which latter used to be the Rue de la Mortellerie, stands what is left of the Sens mansion, the only specimen, together with the Cluny Museum, of what private architecture was in the fifteenth century. After being inhabited by Princes of the Church, Bishops, Cardinals, and also by Marguerite de Valois (Queen Margot), the Sens mansion fell on evil days. It became the "Diligence Office"; and from its courtyard is said to have started the famous courier whose murder was attributed to Lesurques, the unfortunate Lesurques popularised by the well-known drama performed at the Ambigu, which caused so many tears to flow.

In more recent times, the Hôtel de Sens derogated further still. It became a manufactory of sweets!

At No. 5 of the Rue du Figuier, we meet with a draw-well, the top of which is finely sculptured; the spot brings back the memory of Rabelais, the admirable Rabelais, who died quite near, in the Rue des Jardins. At No. 15, opened the sixteenth-century door through which the actors of the illustrious theatre established on the ancient site of the Jeu de Paume de la Croix-Noire, proceeded to their private stage-room. It was before this door that Molière was arrested and taken to the Châtelet, because he owed "142 livres to Antoine Fausseur, master-chandler, his purveyor of light."

Let us cross the Place de la Bastille and go down the Rue du Faubourg-Saint-Antoine. There, at No. 115, in front of an old eighteenth-century house, the Deputy Baudin was killed against a barricade, on the 3rd of December 1851. At No. 303, in the reign of Napoleon I., stood Dr. Dubuisson's private hospital, where General Malet was confined. There he hatched the prodigious plot the disconcerting history of which we intend shortly to relate. Farther on, near the Rue de Montreuil, we pass by the remains of Réveillon's wall-paper stores, pillaged on the 17th of April 1789; it was one of the preludes of the Revolution.

Last of all, at No. 70, in the Rue de Charonne, Dr. Belhomme's private hospital stood, which was used as a special prison under the Revolution. Only those were admitted who could pay and pay well. The irrefutable memoirs of Monsieur de Saint-Aulaine reveal to us a Belhomme familiar, cynical, exacting his fees and thouing Duchesses short of money who haggled with him on the question of their life. The most amiable of historians, my excellent friend G. Lenôtre, whom it is always necessary to quote when facts of the Revolutionary epoch are in question, has reconstituted the terrible and surprising story of the Belhomme institution where they laughed, danced, or even flirted under the dread eye of Fouquier-Tinville; and has related, with his habitual documentation, the bizarre liaison of the Duchess of Orléans, widow of Louis-Philippe Egalité, with Rouzet, the Conventional, buried later at Dreux under the name of the "Count de Folmon" in the Orléans family vault.

Pursuing our way and passing by the Church of Sainte Marguerite, in which Louis XVIII. was interred ... or his double, we reach the barrier of the Throne (the Throne overthrown, people said in 1793). The scaffold, which had temporarily quitted the Revolution Square, was put up here during the most terrible period of the Terror, and the "great batches" were executed upon it. In six weeks, 1300 victims perished, among them, André Chénier, the Baron de Trenck, the Abbess of Montmorency, Cécile Renaud, Madame de Sainte-Amaranthe, the poet Roucher, and many others. The bodies of these unfortunate people, stripped of their clothing, were loaded each evening on covered waggons, with their severed heads between their legs; and the horrible vehicle, dripping with blood along the road, was tipped into some pit dug at the bottom of the Picpus Convent Gardens, where still exists the cemetery of those that were executed during the Revolution.

Retracing our steps, we arrive at No. 9 of the Rue de Reuilly; here was once the Hortensia Tavern, kept in 1789 by the famous Santerre, a major in the National Guard. The house has not much changed; at present, however, it is a girls' boarding-school which occupies the large rooms where the thundering General organised those terrible descents on Paris and launched those dreadful battalions of the faubourg that terrorised even the Convention itself.

And now, let us stop at the Vosges Square on the other side of the Bastille. It is another rare nook of our old City, which, through the centuries, has preserved its ancient character very nearly intact. The houses there, in Louis XIII. style, have not changed. The scenery has remained the same. The Précieuses could take their favourite walks there; and those punctilious in honour might draw their sword, as in the time of Richelieu and the Edict-malcontents; only the public of spectators would be quite different. The fine ladies of the country hight Tender, the Cydalises and Aramynthas, the lords once living in those noble dwellings, they who, on the 16th of March 1612, were present at the tournament given by the Queen Regent, Marie de Médici, in honour of the peace concluded with Spain, or they who proceeded in grand coaches to the fair Marion de Lorme's or to Madame de Sévigné's, are to-day replaced by petty annuitants, modest shopkeepers retired from business and pensioned-off officers. Humble charwomen work at their tasks in the spots where Mazarin's nieces paused in their sedan-chairs; and the numerous Jews that live in the quarter meet there on Saturdays. It is a curious spectacle to see these men and women of strongly marked type betaking themselves to the Synagogue, which is near a partially subsisting eighteenth-century mansion still bearing delicate decorations, but at present occupied by a butcher, in the Rue du Pas-de-la-Mule. Not a few old men wear the long gaberdine, their hair in corkscrew curls, and earrings in their ears. Velvet-eyed girls coifed with bands, wonderfully handsome and peculiarly dressed, assemble there on certain religious feast-days. It is a strange evocation; 'twould seem that in these peaceful quarters biblical traditions have been preserved in some Jewish families.

The old-time animation, however, is an exception. The Vosges Square, once the Place Royale, where Richelieu lived and Fronsac, Chabannes, Marshal de Chaulnes, Rohan-Chabot, Rotrou, Dangeau, Canillac, the Prince de Talmont and Mademoiselle du Châtelet, where Madame de Sévigné was born, where the tragic actress Rachel dwelt, and Théophile Gautier and Victor Hugo, is to-day completely neglected; and this delightful Paris nook, where so much wit was spent, such fine ladies rivalled in grace and elegance and so many exquisites drew their swords, is now nothing but a large, lonely garden, provincial and melancholy, frequented almost exclusively by the pupils of neighbouring boarding-schools, who play there at prisoners' base, and leap-frog, beneath the debonair shadow of Louis XIII.'s statue, with its philosophic frame of a Punch-and-Judy show and a chair-woman's stall.

In the ancient Rue Culture-Sainte-Catherine (at present called the Rue de Sévigné) on the site now occupied by No. 11, formerly stood the Marais theatre, built with money provided by Beaumarchais. In 1792, the Guilty Mother was performed there, for the benefit, said the play-bill, "of the first soldier who shall send citizen Beaumarchais an Austrian's ear." The modern building is a modest private-bath establishment, with a small garden in front in which grow some spindle-trees—in boxes, and which is adorned with silvered balls. The huge wall, all grim and grey, backing the slightly-built bath establishment, is the old wall of the Force Prison, where, on a post at the corner of the Rue des Balais, Madame de Lamballe was executed, where also Madame de Tallien was transferred, and Princess de Tarente was confined, the latter, the grandmother of the kind, courteous and learned Duke de la Trémoïlle, who had only to dip into his incomparable family archives to give us the most precious documents of French history, and to whom we are indebted for those picturesque and exciting "Souvenirs of Madame de Tarente," one of the most valuable narrations by an eye-witness of the Revolutionary period.

The Carnavalet mansion, Madame de Sévigné's "dear Carnavalette," is close by, as also the ancient Le Peletier-Saint-Fargeau mansion, to-day the City of Paris Library. It is a fine, large building of noble appearance, which contains wonderful books, maps, plans and manuscripts. The written history of Paris is there; and all workers know the pretty, sculpture-ornamented room of Monsieur le Vayer, the erudite, obliging Curator of these fine collections. Messieurs Poète, Beaurepaire, Jacob, Jarach and Wilhem, in the Library; Messieurs Pètre and Stirling in the History room are the wise and welcoming hosts of this admirable Parisian Library.

All this Marais quarter, indeed, contains sumptuous mansions, not one of which, alas! has been respected. All are given over to business and manufacturing. The Lamoignon mansion is occupied by glass-polishers and garden-seatmakers; the Albret mansion by a bronze lamp-dealer; those of Tallard, Maulevrier, Sauvigny, Brevannes, Epernon, &c., are still standing, but in what a state! The Rue des Nonnains-d'Hyères offers us its curious bass-relief, in painted stone, representing a knife-grinder in eighteenth-century costume. In 1748, a Madame de Pannelier kept a "wit-office" in this same street; Lalande, Sautereau, Guichard, Leclerc de Merry used to attend meetings there. They were held on Wednesdays, and were preceded by an excellent dinner. The tradition has happily been preserved in Paris.

In the Rue François-Miron, one sees a spacious, handsome mansion with circular pediment, escutcheons and garlands. It is the Beauvais mansion, built by Le Pautre in 1658.

To look at it now, old and in a dull street, one would hardly think that the coaches of Louis XIV.—King Sun—had passed under the dark vault of the entrance gate and that, from the top of the central pavilion balcony, Queen Anne of Austria, in company with the Queen of England, Cardinal Mazarin, Marshal de Turenne and other illustrious nobles, had watched her son Louis XIV. and her daughter-in-law, the new Queen Marie-Thérèse of Austria, go by as they made, through Saint-Antoine's Gate, their solemn entry into Paris on the 26th of August 1660![3]

On account of its picturesque aspect and the fine mansions it contains, the Rue Geoffroy-l'Asnier is one of the most curious in Paris. At No. 26 stands the Châlons-Luxembourg mansion, with its monumental door and wonderful knocker. At the bottom of the courtyard is an exceedingly elegant Louis XIII. pavilion in brick and stone, and of delicate proportions. The mansion was built for the second Constable of Montmorency, and though it is quite lost in this gloomy quarter, it maintains its proud bearing.

After the Revolution, this street, whence nearly all the owners of houses had emigrated, if they had not been guillotined, was completely stripped of its former splendour. Petty annuitants, small clerks, and poor people took up their abode in the abandoned buildings. Grass grew in the streets; many of the dwellings had been sold as national property; and the Rue Geoffroy-l'Asnier underwent the common fate; it became democratic.

Between this street and the neighbouring Rue des Barres, one is surprised to see a sort of fissure so narrow that two persons would find it difficult to walk abreast through it, a sort of corridor along which the wind sweeps past dilapidated, leaning houses on either side. It is the Rue Grenier-sur-l'Eau, wretched and dirty enough, but quaint, with the glorious tower of Saint-Gervais-Saint-Protais in the background, rising and standing out against the sky.

The proper moment to take a look at the sinister little Rue des Barres is on a stormy night, behind the church of Saint-Gervais. It is then easy to imagine what this quiet quarter must have been like when, on the 9th of Thermidor, about eleven in the evening, 'mid torch-lights, calls to arms, the noise of the tocsin and shouts of the multitude, the dead body of Lebas was brought thither, and, on a chair, Augustin Robespierre, who had broken his thighs in leaping from one of the Town Hall windows. The dead man and the dying man were dragged to the Barres mansion transformed into a Sectional Committee Tribunal. On the morrow Lebas was buried, and Robespierre was carried before the Committee of Public Safety, who sent him to the scaffold.

The Rue des Barres descends to the Seine, near the old Town Hall Quay, where the big, flat boats laden with apples, stones, or sand take their moorings. Into it opens one of the exits of the charming Church of Saint-Gervais, whose fine painted windows, masterpieces of Pinaigrier and Jean Cousin, were almost totally destroyed twenty years ago by an explosion of dynamite. Against the church walls, in the laicised ruins of an ancient chapel, a sweet manufacturer has installed his alembics and copper pans; and it is a curious sight to see the lighted fires of this strange kitchen beneath these antique Gothic arches, between these blackened pillars still bearing traces of the candles that once burned in front of the holy images, on a ground formerly used for burying and even now concealing bones. The out-offices of the old church still remain, wonderfully picturesque, and open into the Rue François-Miron, No. 2, on the left of the entrance portal of the church, between a laundress's establishment and a furniture-remover's premises!

On one side, the little Rue de l'Hôtel-de-Ville brings us to the Rue Vieille-du-Temple, where we can admire, at No. 47, what is left of the quaint mansion of the Dutch Ambassadors, where "Monsieur Caron de Beaumarchais and Madame his spouse," as an almanac of 1787 called them, established in 1784 a Provident Institution for poor nursing mothers. Indeed, it was for the benefit of this undertaking that the fiftieth performance of the Mariage de Figaro was given. Farther on, to the right, at the corner of the Rue des Francs-Bourgeois, stands the pretty turret built about 1500 for Jean Hérouet; and, last of all, the fine Rohan palace, which to-day is the National Printing House. This last is a noble and spacious building which the elegant Cardinal that once lived in it took pleasure in sumptuously decorating. A masterpiece may be seen there, "the Horses of Apollo," in a wonderful bass-relief by Pierre Le Lorrain. The saloon of the Apes, by Huet, is charming, and the private room of Monsieur Christian, the witty and learned Director of the National Printing House, contains a beautiful Caffieri time-piece. Why must, alas! this fine palace be condemned soon to disappear? The Rohan mansion is to be demolished, and the State will commit the sacrilege! May the endeavours of lovers of Paris succeed in preserving for us this precious vestige of a past that each day removes farther from us!

A cabman whose astonishment must have been great was a certain George who, on the 22nd of October 1812, at half-past eleven in the evening, amid a driving rain that turned the miry soil of Saint-Peter's pudding-bag (now the Villehardouin blind alley) into a veritable bog, saw get out of his cab, near the Rue Saint-Gilles, a completely naked man, with his uniform under his arm—a soldier whom, twenty minutes before, he had picked up in the Louvre Square. This strange passenger was Corporal Rateau, proceeding to the appointment made with him by General Malet, inside Dr. Dubuisson's private hospital and asylum, 303 Faubourg-Saint-Antoine, where the latter was confined by the authorities. In his haste to put on the fine uniform of an orderly officer, which was ready for him in exchange for his own, Rateau had undressed in the cab; and up the dark staircase of the gloomy house in the gloomy street he rushed with absolutely nothing on.

The little house still exists, wretched and dingy-looking, where Malet appointed to meet his accomplices, on the third floor in the abode of the Abbé Cajamanos, an old bewildered Spanish priest who had quitted the Bicêtre asylum.

This adventure of General Malet's is both prodigious and disconcerting. For, in 1812, at the moment when Napoleon seemed to be at the summit of his power, Malet, in a sort of dungeon, with the help of five or six obscure assistants, an old priest with hardly any knowledge of French, a half-pay officer, an almost illiterate sergeant and a few other hare-brained people, had been able, even while confined, watched and suspected, to combine everything, prepare everything, so that the report of the Emperor's death might be believed—the Emperor being absent in the icy steppes of Russia, and no news arriving from him. And his calculations were justified. All the Imperial functionaries, from Savary, the head of the police, down to Frochot, the Prefect of the Seine, accepted General Malet's allegations, without testing or discussing them. Especially, all believed his fine promises; and it is hard to say where the hoaxer would have stopped if an officer, simply obeying his orders, had not refused to be gained over with fine words, and asked for proofs. Malet, being taken aback, grew impatient, and replied with a pistol-shot. Major Doucet forthwith arrested him, and the comedy ended in a tragedy.

All the more haste was made to get rid of the organisers of this plot, which had so nearly succeeded, as it was necessary to suppress as quickly as possible their awkward testimony to such cowardice, lying, and compromise.

The poor dwelling in the Villehardouin blind alley was searched by all the Paris police; papers, uniforms, cocked hats, and swords were fished out of the little well, still existing, into which they had been wildly thrown. In a few hours, Malet, Lahorie, Rateau, and Guidal were tried, condemned, and executed. The replies of the General to the Tribunal that so summarily judged him were home-thrusts. Asked (somewhat late) who were his accomplices: "All of you," he said, "if I had succeeded!"

Taken to the wall of evil memory in the plain of Grenelle, he insisted on giving the firing-order to the execution-platoon; and, as if he had been on the drill-ground, made the soldiers repeat the aiming movement, which had not been carried out with military precision. Rateau, who, as a matter of fact, had understood nothing of this strange drama, in which he had been one of the most picturesque confederates, is said to have died in crying: "Long live the Emperor!"

Between the Archives and the Rue Sainte-Croix-de-la-Bretonnerie, there was once a large monastery, which, in 1631, became the property of the Carmelite Billettes,—the name being derived from an ornament worn by these monks on their gowns. The Revolution suppressed the monastery; but the small cloister has come down to us with its charming proportions and its monastic cosiness. To-day, it is a Town School, and the neighbouring church is devoted to Protestant worship.

At the least popular excitement, this inextricable labyrinth of small streets used to bristle with barricades. At the crossing of the Rue Saint-Martin and the Rue Aubry-le-Boucher was raised the terrible barricade defended by Jeanne and his intrepid companions. Following on the burial of General Lamarque, who died while pressing to his lips the sword offered to him by the Bonapartist officers of the Hundred Days, an immense revolutionary movement had galvanized Paris. The old soldiers of the Empire, the survivors of the Terror and those of 1830, allied in their common hatred of Louis-Philippe's government, had joined the malcontents of all parties and the members of the then numerous secret societies. In the evening of the 5th of June 1832, the centre of Paris was covered with barricades; and both troops and National Guard had been obliged to reconquer, one by one, the positions that had been lost. Slaughter had been going on the whole night. When the dawn of the 6th of June tinged the house-roofs with pink, the large Saint-Merri barricade was seen to be holding out; its defenders, a handful of heroic men, had sworn to bury themselves under its ruins. Already they had repulsed ten furious assaults; now they were awaiting death; and the loud tones of the Saint-Merri tocsin, unceasingly sounding above their heads, seemed to be tolling their funeral knell! Part of the Paris army had to be utilised to vanquish these dauntless insurgents. Firing went on from windows, cellars, the pavement. Round the barricades, dead bodies of National Guards and soldiers, riddled with balls, crushed beneath blocks of stone hurled from roof-tops, testified to the frightful savagery of this intestine struggle. For long afterwards, the ground was red with blood! What numbers of balls and bullets, what quantities of grapeshot all these old house-fronts have received in the haphazard of riots, frequent during the reign of Louis-Philippe.

The drums no sooner beat than the citizens armed and hurried to defend order ... or to attack it; anxious women, cowering behind closed shutters, watched for the biers.

Things resumed their ordinary course immediately the disorder was over; the insurgent hobnobbed with the honest National Guard whom he had aimed his gun at on the day before. Sometimes, however, grudges remained.

My parents knew an old woman, living in the Rue Saint-Merri, who, for forty years after 1836, never passed without trembling by the door of the tenant underneath her flat. As people were surprised at this persistent apprehension, she said: "If you only knew what happened to me!" and she related that, one evening when there was a riot and her husband had been absent all day firing in the ranks of the National Guard, she was in the house alone, mad with anxiety; suddenly, at the corner of the street, she saw a stretcher appear, covered with sacking, which the bearers deposited at her door. Was it her husband that they were bringing home dead? She rushed out, raised the edge of the cover and recognised in the person lying with smashed jaw, haggard eyes, bleeding from a ball in the cheek, the tenant underneath: "Ah, what a good thing!" she cried; "it's you, Monsieur Vitry!"

Since that day Monsieur Vitry had given her the cold shoulder.

In the reign of Charles VI., under pretext of purifying the quarter—the pretext and the Vicar of Saint-Merri's complaint being only too well grounded—these "hot streets" were cleared of the majority of low, lewd people who had taken up their domicile in them. But, if morality had its claims, business also had its interests; and the worthy shopkeepers of the neighbourhood, deeming these of more importance than decency, energetically protested against the measure so prejudicial to their petty commerce. They gained the day, and, on the 21st of January 1388, Parliament reversed the Provost's decision, the result being that the merry band returned in triumph to their old haunts, celebrating the event with feasting and banqueting.

In his Chronicle of the Streets, our learned friend, Beaurepaire, librarian of the City of Paris, asserts that the Rue Pirouette, near Saint-Eustace's Church, owes its singular name to the "Market Stocks that stood at this spot. It was an octagonal tower with lofty ogival windows, in the centre of which was an iron wheel pierced with holes for the head and arms of vagabonds, murderers, panders, and blasphemers, who were exposed thus to public derision. On three consecutive market-days, for two hours each day, they were fastened in the stocks and turned every half-hour in a different direction. In other words, they were forced to 'pirouette,' whence the name of the street."

After doing penance there, in the olden times, malefactors betake themselves thither to-day to sup. The "Guardian Angel," a thieves' restaurant, exhibits its signboard almost at the corner of the street: in it rogues laugh, drink and sing, and hatch their morrow's exploits. The Staff of the army of vice make it their meeting-place. It is the fashionable resort, a sort of burglars' "Maxim-restaurant," where Paris hooligans deem it elegant to appear. Casque-d'or and his pals reign there, and the scoundrel who has just committed an evil deed is certain to secure good lodging within, and all else he requires. But it is not only knights of the blood-letting industry who inhabit this noble dwelling; other lords come there to eat snails and drink champagne: suspicious-looking young men with plastered hair, who noisily spend their money gained by blackmailing or some other reprehensible action. The place is a disgrace to the Capital. The landlord affirms that there are honest folk among his customers. The thing is possible—anyway, they must find themselves in very bad company.

Quite close, almost next door, at No. 5, is the "Helmet Courtyard," which gives us a striking impression of what ancient dwellings were. It was, in fact, once a sumptuous fourteenth-century mansion; to-day, it is only a hand-cart repository, where shafts point up to the old ceilings with their projecting beams, shafts shiny with use, and a fishmonger's warehouse, in which Burgundy snails, and cooked or raw lobsters are sold. The nook is a quaint one, and the quarter also, with its remains of the Rue de la Grande-Truanderie, where, on the 10th of May 1797, one of the ancestors of Communism, Babœuf, was arrested.

Not far away used to be the Rue de la Tonnellerie, where Molière lived. This street disappeared when the Rue Turbigo was cut.

In the Central Market quarter, where every one works, where each shop offers to Paris gourmands the best victuals, the freshest vegetables, the daintiest fruits, where, every night, long files of market gardeners' carts bring in loads of provisions of all sorts, each street has, so to speak, its speciality. Housewives know where to find their poultry, crayfish, cheese, or oranges. All the little streets, skirting the Halles, are full of astonishing shops contrived in door-corners, or cellar-corners, all of which for generations have been kept by worthy husbandmen, petty dealers, hucksters, or basket-hawkers, having their own line, their own customers. In the curious Rue Montorgueil, old abodes that amaze one are still to be found; for instance, between Nos. 64 and 72, the ancient Golden Compass Inn, which was the calling place for so many generations of carriers. Its double entrance, blocked up with small butchers', tripe-dealers', and poulterers' stalls, opens on a huge yard, where fowls peck on heaps of golden dung, where ducks quack, and goats bleat under the eyes of some thirty horses, peaceful tenants of the ground floor, with their inquisitive heads thrust over the half-doors, through the low windows or open air-holes. At the back, beneath the spacious shed, the carriages and carts are put up, 'midst a healthy country smell of verdure and hay; and it really is a curious sight to see such a silent nook, with its farmyard, at the back of the noisy, populous, crowded street, full of workmen, pedlars, and shouts or cries of bubbling life and movement.

What is left of the Rue Quincampoix, behind the old Tower of Saint-Jacques-la-Boucherie, emphasises the strangeness of this neighbourhood, in which the exterior, though renewed, has been partly preserved, but which has been more modified and transformed as regards inhabitants and customs than perhaps any other quarter. It was, in fact, in the Rue Quincampoix that the famous Law established his offices of the Mississippi Bank. There, all Paris suffered the fever of speculation. The madness was general. For months nothing but folly and ruin reigned. All gambled—duchess, priest, philosopher and courtier, shopkeeper and ballet-actress, peer and lackey, excise-farmer and his clerk. In order to profit by proximity to the celebrated stock-jobber, each shop, room and cellar even, rented at foolishly high prices, was turned into a gaming establishment; and the case is quoted of a cobbler who hired for a hundred livres a day his stall stinking with wax and old leather; the gold mania had broken down all distinctions. And then the fatal crisis came, the panic, the crash. In the Rue Quincampoix one saw none but despairing faces. Every day there was a series of murders, suicides, attacks of lunacy. On one single occasion, twenty-seven bodies of suicides or murdered people were fished out of the river at the nets of Saint-Cloud. To speculate still, money at any price was needed. Highway robbery was practised, and the footpads were of all classes of society. One of these, the young Count de Horn, a relative of the Regent, and already notorious through his follies, hired two rascals of his own kind, enticed a rich young stock-jobber into an inn of the Rue de Venise, stabbed him and took his money. The scandal was enormous! Both Court and City lost their heads. Would justice at last act and severity be shown? There was a good deal of intriguing and excitement; but, finally, the Lieutenant for criminal affairs, acting on the orders of the Regent, arrested the Count de Horn, on the 22nd of March 1720; and, four days after, the latter was broken on the wheel and executed in the centre of the Grève Square, amidst the applause of all Paris.

The Rue Quincampoix likewise contains some few old mansions now inhabited by certain "medical specialists," cheese-dealers, eau-de-seltz makers, &c. At Nos. 58, 28, 14, 15, and, notably, at No. 10, are seen remnants of forged iron, broken balconies, chipped grotesque masks of stone.... But the whole is tumbling to pieces, and to ruin, and only by a strong effort of the imagination can one reconstitute, out of these wretched fragments, the life of luxury, fever and stock-jobbing that once filled this old street, now foul with chemical smells and rancid odours of fried potatoes.

Collé's prophecy has been fulfilled: "One no longer belongs to Paris when one belongs to the Marais!"

Trade has laid hold of the fine mansions of yore; druggists have set up their distilleries in them, toy-makers sell their puppets in them, and the hawker with his Paris article is the monarch that governs them.

The population at present is poor, laborious, yet intelligent and active; and the contrast between it and the transformed dwellings wherein it dwells is not without interest and grace. A visit to the Archives, Marais and Saint-Merri quarters is certainly something no one should omit.

The picturesque line of central boulevards extends from the Bastille to the Madeleine Church. There Paris life may be studied under the most varied aspects, as well as the most elegant.

To speak of there being a general characterisation of the boulevards would be hardly correct, inasmuch as each of them has its special physiognomy.

The Beaumarchais Boulevard has an atmosphere of middle-class tranquillity about it. Nothing has survived of the fine mansion, surmounted with a feather-shaped weather-cock and flag, which was built there by the author of the Mariage de Figaro, nor yet of the famous gardens, once the wonder of Paris, which could only be visited with a special card signed by Beaumarchais himself and given but to few. Yet some one of our own generation has known them, and penetrated into what for a while remained of the gorgeous abode; and that some one is Victorien Sardou. Did he have a presentiment that, in talent and wit, he would one day be the successor of the Beaumarchais whose property he thus intruded on? Anyway, in 1839, Victorien Sardou, aged seven, was living with his parents in the Place de la Bastille. With his little companions he used to play at ball or with hoop round the elephant and the canal banks. At the entrance to the Beaumarchais Boulevard of to-day some long, worm-eaten palisades bordered a piece of waste ground. On the palisades were hung halfpenny pictures of actors, actresses, and soldiers; and no one was fonder of looking at them than the little Sardou.

One day, while enjoying his open-air picture-gallery, he caught a glimpse of a huge garden through the interstice between two of the palings. "What was this garden?" "Suppose he entered!" So he and another urchin of his own age wrenched away a paling with the sticks of their hoops, and in a delight of terror slipped into the unknown domain. What an amazement! They found themselves in a Sleeping Beauty's realm. Weeds, lianes, branches, trees had grown over everything. It was a flora and fauna of the virgin forests; rabbits, birds and butterflies were its denizens; and Robinson Crusoe was not more surprised in exploring his island than these two youngsters in wandering about this jungle.

Sardou vaguely remembers there being a ruined pavilion and some tumble-down old walls; what he recollects better are the banks, ditches, and slopes where he and his companion had such delightful escapades; and nothing is more interesting than to hear this witty and charming talker relate his stories of the bygone Paris which he regrets so much and remembers so well.

The old dwellings have disappeared. A single one still exists at the corner of the Rue Saint-Claude, No. 1. It is the celebrated abode in which the talented charlatan, Cagliostro, installed his furnaces, his crucibles, his alembics, his transformation machines, all the weird utensils that served for his magic sittings.

The house has not been much altered. It remains, as always, strange, enigmatical, mysterious, with its staircases constructed in the body of the walls, its secret corridors, its mechanical ceilings, its cellars of many exits. The greatest lords, the noblest dames frequented this abode. Cardinal de Rohan was a familiar guest. The report ran that gold was made there, and that Cagliostro, the great Copht, had discovered the secret of the philosopher's stone! He offered, continued the legend, repasts of thirteen covers at which the guests were enabled to call up the dead, which was why Montesquieu, Choiseul, Voltaire and Diderot had taken part at Cagliostro's last supper.

All that made a stir; there were murmurs; the thing was proclaimed a scandal. Louis XVI. shrugged his shoulders and Marie Antoinette forbade any one to "speak to her of this charlatan." But every one tried to obtain entrance into the "divine sorcerer's house," and Lorenza, his wife, was obliged to open a class of magic for the benefit of the ladies of the upper circles.

Then came the affair of the necklace. Cagliostro, being compromised with Cardinal de Rohan and Madame de Lamotte, was arrested and thrown into the Bastille; and it was not until ten months later, on the 1st of June 1787, that he was able to return to the house in the Rue Saint-Claude, escorted by a crowd of eight to ten thousand persons, blocking the Boulevard, the courtyard of the house and the staircases. He was cheered, embraced, carried in triumph. This grand day was a climax. A few hours after it, a King's order banished him from France, and the house was shut up. Only in 1805 were its doors reopened for the sale of the furniture; and the sight must have been a curious one! In 1855, the building was repaired; the leaves of the entrance gate were changed; those to-day opening into the Rue Saint-Claude came from the ancient buildings of the Temple; so that the gates of Louis XVI.'s prison give access now to the mansion where Cagliostro once performed his marvels.

In the Filles-du-Calvaire Boulevard stands the Winter Circus, still unchanged, with its Icarian Games and its equilibrists, its smiling horse-women who for so many years have leaped through the same paper-filled hoops and made the same pleased bow to the worshipping crowd. But, if the spectacle is not much varied, the public of youngsters is constantly renewed, and the laughs we heard in our childhood still welcome the same clowns' grimaces. Only Monsieur Loyal is no longer there, the admirable, imposing Monsieur Loyal, tight-buttoned in his fine blue coat, who, with such noble gesture and slashing whip, restrained the mocking clown's quips and quirks or the shyings of the mare Rigolette exhibited at liberty.

Would any one now believe that for more than a century the Temple Boulevard was the centre of Paris gaiety? A charming engraving by Saint-Aubin shows us it joyous, smart, and full of life. Coaches, cabs, and other vehicles pass and repass; grand ladies and fashionably dressed women rival with each other in grace, manners and toilet, the latter of the strangest names; and the draughtsman Briou can write below a fashion engraving of the period: "The provoking Julia reposing on the Boulevard, while awaiting a stroke of good fortune; she is in morning gown with a Diana hat that flying hearts adorn." At Alexander's Cafè Royal, there is supper and dancing; people crowd to listen to Nicolet's patter; and a circle of hearers surround Fanchon, the hurdy-gurdy player. On the same Boulevard, Curtius sets up his luxuriously arranged wax-work saloons; and, later, the parades of Bobèche and Galimafré will be the joy of Paris; for a long time, the fair will continue.

The Ambigu, the Historic Theatre, the Gaiety, the Funambules, the Olympic Circus, the Little-Lazari, the Délassements Comiques,—ten theatres or so will add to the excitement with their strange, nervous, grandiloquent, noisy companies of actors. The gay apprentices, at all times fond of plays, will cheer as they go by the heroes of all these dramas and melodramas, so numerous that popular slang had nicknamed as Crime Boulevard the thoroughfare where, at twelve each evening, so much blood flowed on the boards of these theatres. There were Madame Dorval, Mademoiselle George, Mademoiselle Déjazet, Messieurs Bocage, Mélingue, Bouffé, Dumaine, Saint-Ernest, Boutin, Colbrun, Lesueur, Deburau—the ideal Pierrot—and also Gobert, so like Napoleon I., as was Taillade, who, thin and nervous, was incarnating Bonaparte. It was the period when the Bonapartist epopee turned people's heads to such an extent that the poor comedian Briand, who, in one of the many Napoleon plays, was acting the ungrateful part of Sir Hudson Lowe, said: "I shall never have a similar success. Yesterday, I was waited for at the theatre door and thrown into the Château-d'Eau canal basin!"