“The Police,” writes M. Peuchet in his “Mémoires tirés des Archives de la Police,” “will never learn to respect an order so long as its superintendents are taken from the hulks and feel that they have their revenge to take on the society which has punished them.” The justice of this remark has since been recognised. The first care of Delavau’s successor, the honourable and much regretted M. de Belleyme, was to dismiss, and even to send back to their prisons, the army of cut-throat spies employed by the Prefect he replaced. At present, though his occupation stands no higher in public opinion than of old, the spy is not the outcast that he formerly was. Without being an honest man in the full sense of the word, he is not literally and legally a criminal. It is even asserted that the French spy of our own time is a man of some character; by which is probably meant that he has never been convicted of any offence, that he does not drink, that he has no depraved tastes, and that in a general way he can be depended upon. “Espionage,” says Montesquieu, “is never tolerable. Otherwise the trade would be exercised by honourable men. From the necessary infamy of the person must be inferred the infamy of the thing.” This, in effect, is just what the Minister d’Argenson said when he was reproached with engaging none but rogues and knaves as spies. “Find me,” he replied, “decent men to do such work!” The decent men have now, it appears, been found. So much the better.

As, however, there is said to be honour among thieves, so there is sometimes honesty among spies. Witness the case of the Abbé Lenglet-Dufresnoy, simultaneously employed by Louis XIV. to keep watch over Prince Eugène, and by Prince Eugène to report all that was done by Louis XIV., and who is said to have given the most exact information to both his employers.

The Place du Parvis—The Parvis of Notre Dame—The Hôtel-Dieu—Mercier’s Criticisms.

IN the matter of police administration and of civic government generally; the Hôtel de Ville is to the whole of Paris what the Mansion House and the Guildhall are to that part of London known specially as the City. The Hôtel de Ville has charge, moreover, of all the Paris hospitals and benevolent institutions. The general administration of the hospitals is entrusted to a Director, under the surveillance of a Consultative Committee.

The most ancient and most celebrated of all the Paris hospitals is the Hôtel-Dieu, occupying a space which is bounded on the north by the Quai aux Fleurs, on the south by the Place du Parvis, on the west by the Rue de la Cité, and on the east by the Rue d’Arcole.

The Place du Parvis deserves a word of mention to itself. The word “Parvis” has several derivations, the most popular of which is from the Latin paradisus. The ancient form of the French word was paraïs or paravis, contracted into parvis; and it was applied to the open space in front of a church because, in the days of the “mysteries,” it was here that the paradise of the play was located. According to another derivation, the “parvis” is the ground outside a church which “pare” or “guards” the principal door—huis in the ancient French. In this sense the word is used to denote, in the Jewish Temple, the space around the tabernacle. Parvis céleste is a phrase employed by French poets to signify heaven or the firmament; which does not at all prove—indeed seems to disprove—that parvis means, or ever did mean, the same thing as paradisus. The parvis of the old churches was, in any case, used as a place of penance for those who had scandalised the town by some offence against good morals; and it was there that on certain occasions holy relics were brought for exhibition to the people. The temples of Greece and Rome were surrounded by enclosures, as if to separate them from the public thoroughfare; and the first Christian churches had enclosures in front of the principal entrance, where tombs, crosses, statues, and sometimes fountains were to be seen. After the twelfth century the parvis ceased to be enclosed; though so late as the sixteenth century the Parvis of Notre Dame appears, by exception, to have been shut in by a wall not more than three feet high, through which there were three different gateways.

The Parvis of Notre Dame served in ancient days the most varied purposes. Here, before the establishment of the University of Paris, public schools were held. It was a place of punishment, moreover; and it was on a scaffold erected in the Parvis of Notre Dame that Jacques de Molay and the Templars heard the sentence read which was afterwards executed upon them (March 18, 1314) in the Île aux Vaches, as the little island was anciently called where now stands the statue of Henri IV. Here, too, under Francis I., Huguenots were given to the flames.

Jacques de Molay, the last grand master of the Templars, was born in Burgundy, and entered the order in 1265. He distinguished himself in Palestine, in the wars against the Mussulmans. Elected grand master in 1298, he was preparing to avenge the defeats which the Christian arms had recently sustained, when in 1305 he was recalled to France by Pope Clement V. The pretext for this summons was a projected union of the order of Templars with that of the Hospitallers. But the true object of Philip the Fair, for whom the Pope had acted only as instrument, was the destruction of the order, whose immense wealth had excited the monarch’s covetousness. On the 13th of October, 1307, all the Templars were arrested at the same hour throughout France; and a process was instituted against them in which every form of justice was violated. Thirty-six knights expired under torture, and several owned to the crimes and the shameful immorality of which they were falsely accused. Molay himself, in the agony of torture, allowed some words to escape him; but before dying nearly all the victims retracted the utterances wrung from them by pain. The Pope, throughout this tragic affair, followed the directions of the French king, to whom he owed his tiara.

In old French, the second of two substantives joined together did duty as genitive; so that Hôtel-Dieu signified the hotel (or house) of God, just as in some ancient French towns Mère-Dieu, as the sign of an hotel, meant not, as is sometimes ignorantly supposed, “God the Mother,” but “The Mother of God.” The Hôtel-Dieu or Hôtel de Dieu (a house, that is to say, in which the poor and suffering were received and attended in the name of God and under His auspices) was founded about 660, in the time of Clovis II., son of Dagobert, by Saint Landri, twenty-eighth bishop of Paris. Here he was accustomed to receive, at his own expense, not only sick people, but also beggars and pilgrims. Medicus et Hospes, such was the motto of the bishop, who might justly claim the double title of physician and host. In the course of centuries the good work begun by Saint Landri was continued on a large scale by the French kings, with Philip Augustus, Saint Louis, and Henri IV. prominent among them. Among the benefactors of the Hôtel-Dieu must also be mentioned the Chancellor du Prat, and the first President, Pomponne de Bellièvre.

The old Hôtel-Dieu, after undergoing all kinds of repairs, was at last condemned as too small and too ill-ventilated. In 1868 a new hospital was begun just opposite the old one; and the building as it now stands, large, airy, and in every respect commodious, was finished in 1878. With abundance of space at their command, the architects of the modern Hôtel-Dieu made it their sole aim to secure for the patients every possible advantage, and their first care was to provide spacious wards replete with light and air. One result has been that in a larger edifice the number of the beds has, in accordance with the best hygienic principles, been greatly diminished.

In the time of Saint Louis the old Hôtel-Dieu received 900 patients. This number was increased under Henri IV. to 1,300, and under Louis XIV. to 1,900. At times, however, the sick or wounded persons admitted were far more numerous; and in 1709 the number of patients in the Hôtel-Dieu is said to have reached 9,000. Not, however, the number of beds; for in the same bed several patients, at the risk of infection, contagion, and frightful mortality, were placed together. The new Hôtel-Dieu, on the other hand, contains only 514 beds: 329 medical beds, 169 surgical beds, and sixteen cradles. The building having cost fifty million francs, it follows that each particular bed has cost nearly one hundred thousand francs; and philanthropists point out that at 6,000 francs per bed, “the ordinary figure in England and other countries,” more than 8,000 patients might have been provided for in lieu of 500. It must be remembered, on the other hand, that the Hôtel-Dieu contains, besides its hospital service properly so called, an administrative department: including amphitheatres of practical surgery, laboratories of pharmacy, chemistry, etc., which alone cost fourteen millions of francs. According, moreover, to the original plan as approved by the principal professors and physicians of the Hôtel-Dieu, there was to have been an additional storey containing 260 beds, to which the patients below were to have been transferred on certain days for change of air and to allow the lower rooms to be thoroughly ventilated and cleaned. This additional storey cost four millions of francs, and it had already been completed, when, for reasons unexplained, but which, according to M. Vitu, were political, it was pulled down.

The general plan of the Hôtel-Dieu as it now stands comprises two masses of parallel buildings: one beside the Parvis of Notre Dame, the other alongside the Quai Napoléon; the two façades, anterior and posterior, of the edifice being connected laterally by galleries at right angles to the Seine. The administrative department of the Hôtel-Dieu is in that part of the building which faces the Parvis. On the ground floor, to the left, is the Central Bureau of Hospitals; the head-quarters of the hospital service, not only of Paris, but generally of the Department of the Seine. The staff consists of twenty physicians, fifteen surgeons, and three accoucheurs chosen by competition; and from this body are selected the physicians and surgeons of the various Paris hospitals. Formerly patients were admitted on mere application; but at present they are carefully examined by the physicians of the Central Bureau, who give out tickets of admission and assign beds so long as there is room. If the Hôtel-Dieu is full the applicants for medical care are sent to other hospitals. Adjoining the Central Bureau are the rooms where out-door patients receive gratuitous advice.

Visitors to the Hôtel-Dieu, as to other hospitals in Paris, cannot fail to observe that the air is less pure in the men’s than in the women’s wards. This is to be explained by the men being allowed the only solace possible under the circumstances, that of tobacco. Nor are their grey dressing-gowns by any means so becoming as the white frocks and white caps worn by the female patients.

Many of the wards contain only from two to eight beds. There is a sitting-room, moreover, with lounges, chairs, and sofas for the convalescent, not to speak of an open gallery above the portico, where patients who are well enough may, in fine weather, stretch their limbs. The upper storey of that part of the building which faces the Quai aux Fleurs used to be occupied by the community of Dames Augustines, who from time immemorial had had no other abode and no other head-quarters. But after the civil government had withdrawn from the Dames Augustines the hospital service of La Pitié and La Charité, they all assembled at the Hôtel-Dieu, where additional sleeping rooms were prepared for them beneath the roof. Subscriptions were solicited for them in a pastoral letter from the Archbishop of Paris, dated December 2, 1888; and a new retreat was then found for them in the Hospital of Notre Dame de Bon Secours. One duty imposed upon them, in the days when the Hôtel-Dieu was composed of two large buildings on the banks of the Seine, was to wash, one day every month, whatever might be the temperature, 500 sheets. The sisters, equally with novices, were obliged to take part in these laundry operations. An ancient print, preserved in the National Library, gives a faithful representation of the washing of the 500 sheets.

The Hotel de Ville—Saint-Jacques-la-Boucherie—Rue Saint-Antoine—The Reformation.

After the Revolution of 1830, when the Hôtel de Ville became all at once a place of high political importance, the open space in front of it was looked upon as unworthy any longer to serve as a slaughter-ground, and the Place Saint-Jacques now became the head-quarters of the guillotine; which was afterwards to be transferred to the Place de la Roquette. The region of Paris commanded by the Hôtel de Ville forms a long irregular parallelogram, comprising, for the most part, the districts of Saint-Méry, Saint-Gervais and the Arsenal, bounded on the south by the Seine, on the west by the Place du Châtelet and the Boulevard Sébastopol, on the east by the Saint-Martin Canal and the Boulevard Bourdon, on the north by the Rue de Rivoli and the Rue Saint-Antoine, rejoining the Boulevard Bourdon at the Place de la Bastille. To the construction of the Rue de Rivoli is due the happy change which has taken place in this populous region, formerly deprived of light and air, and so overcrowded that the inhabitants were always suffering from some serious epidemic. The streets of the neighbourhood must at that time have been good specimens of those so energetically condemned by Arthur Young in one of his descriptions of Paris.

Napoleon I. began the Rue de Rivoli, tracing it alongside the Tuileries Gardens and the Palais Royal to the Louvre as far as the Rue de Rohan. Napoleon III. continued the great conception of his uncle and pushed on the Rue de Rivoli through the mean habitations and crowded streets in the neighbourhood of the Palais Royal, of Saint-Germain-l’Auxerrois, and of the Halles as far as the upper part of the Rue Saint-Antoine.

The most celebrated, and certainly the most beautiful, monument in the street is the tower of Saint-Jacques-la-Boucherie; so named from its having been built close to the great butchers’ market of Paris. Constructed in 1153, the church, which at first was little more than a chapel, was rebuilt in 1380, but not completed with the principal porch and the tower until the reign of Francis I. The tower is now all that remains of the church, which in 1737, under the Revolution, was alienated by the Administration of Domains and soon afterwards pulled down. Having become private property, the tower passed from hand to hand until 1836, when it was offered for sale, and purchased by the Municipality for 250,000 francs. This sum was not dear for a masterpiece of Gothic art in its last and most delicate period, when it was about to disappear in presence of the Græco-Roman Renaissance. Begun under the reign of Louis XII. in 1508, the tower was finished fourteen years afterwards in 1522. It measures fifty-two metres in height from the stone foundations to the summit. The platform of the steeple (which is reached by a staircase of 291 steps) is surrounded by a balustrade, which supports, at the north-west angle, a colossal statue of Saint Jacques. This statue replaces the ancient one which the Revolutionists of 1793 precipitated on to the pavement, though they respected the symbolical animals placed at the four corners of the balustrade. These have been carefully restored. From the height of the platform a magnificent view may be obtained.

“One sees,” wrote Sanval under Louis XIV., “as one looks over the town the distribution and course of the streets like the veins in the human body. Unfortunately this incomparable view can no longer be obtained—not at least without much difficulty. The tower of Saint-Jacques has been put in the hands of an astronomical and meteorological society, which denies access to the public, though on rare occasions it admits a few favoured persons to its experiments, which take place at night.”

It must here be mentioned that at the foot of the tower is a statue of Pascal, who continued from its top the observations he had begun from the summit of the Puy de Dôme. The writer Nicholas Flamel, librarian to the University of Paris, and Pernelle, his wife, both buried in the vaults of Saint-Jacques-la-Boucherie, had been the benefactors of this church; and their memory is preserved in the name, Nicholas Flamel, given to the street which, beginning on the right of the tower, leads from the Rue de Rivoli to the Rue des Lombards.

Around the tower of Saint-Jacques is a large square, well planted with trees. Further on, towards the east, the Rue de Rivoli runs past the Hôtel de Ville and the Napoleon Barracks. Of the Church of Saint-Gervais, one side of which looks towards the Rue de Rivoli, mention has already been made. Close to the point where the Rue de Rivoli and the Rue Saint-Antoine meet, is an offshoot from the Rue Saint-Antoine called Rue François Miron, after the independent provost of merchants under the reign of Henri IV. In this street stands the Hôtel de Beauvais. From the windows of this mansion Anne of Austria, accompanied by the Queen of England, Cardinal Mazarin, Marshal Turenne, and other illustrious personages, witnessed the procession headed by her son, Louis XIV., and her daughter-in-law, Marie Thérèse of Austria, when the newly married couple made their solemn entry into Paris through the Gate of Saint-Antoine, August 26, 1660.

The first place in Paris where the Reformation was publicly preached was the Louvre. Here Queen Margaret of Navarre, sister of Francis I., Briçonnet’s studious and learned friend, ordered her chaplain, Gérard Roussel, and other disciples of Lefèvre d’Étaples to preach in her presence; for which reason Lemaud, of the Order of Cordeliers, declared publicly in the pulpit that she deserved to be put into a sack and thrown into the Seine. The rage of the priests was shared by the people, and the cry of “Death to the heretics!” was frequently heard about the town. “To be thrown into the river,” says a chronicler of the time, “it was only necessary to be called a Huguenot in the open street, to whatever religion one might belong.” In all the public places of Paris, on the bridges, and in the cemeteries Protestants were constantly burned. In 1535 Francis I., followed by his three sons, the court, the Parliament, and the guilds of all the trade associations, took part in a general procession, which halted at six of the public places, where six Protestants, suspended by iron chains, were burnt to death. “L’estrapade” this form of punishment was called; and not many years ago the name was still borne by an open space on the left bank of the Seine.

Henri II. imitated his father. One day he assisted, from the window of a house in the Rue Saint-Antoine, at the execution of a Protestant tailor who was burnt alive. But the eyes of the martyr, steadily fixed on his, so frightened him that though this was not the last heretic he sentenced to death, it was the last he saw die.

The Protestants of Paris had not at that time either churches or clergy, but they already had schools. “Hedge schools” they were called, from being held in the country. They would not have been permitted in the town.

The first Protestant place of worship established in Paris was at a house in the Pré-aux-Clercs. Protestant congregations were often surprised; and in 1557 a number of Protestants assembled for worship at a house in the Rue Saint-Jacques, opposite the building where the Lycée Louis le Grand is now located, were besieged by a number of priests attached to the Collège du Plessis. The populace took part in the attack; and after remaining indoors six hours, those who at last went out were stoned, and in several instances killed. The rest of the congregation, to the number of 135, were made prisoners, and many of them sentenced to death. Among those executed was the young and beautiful widow of a member of the Consistory, Mme. de Graveron, who, “seated on the tumbril, showed a rosy countenance of excellent beauty.” Her tongue had been cut out, which was often done in those days to prevent the exhortations which martyrs might address to the mob. At other times, as afterwards at the execution of Louis XVI., a constant rolling of drums was kept up. It was granted to Mme. de Graveron as a special favour that flames should be applied only to her feet and face, and that she should be strangled before her body was burnt.

The Protestant poet, Clément Marot, to whom Francis I. had given a house, called the House of the Bronze Horse (now Number 30, Rue de Condé and 27, Rue de Tournon), translated at this epoch some of the psalms into French verse; and his version had an extraordinary vogue even at the court. The students who, at the close of day, were accustomed to amuse themselves in the Pré-aux-Clercs opposite the Louvre, replaced their ordinary songs by the psalms of Clément Marot; and it became the fashion with the lords and ladies of the court to cross the Seine in order to hear the singing of the “clerks.” Often they would themselves join in, and the Huguenot King of Navarre, Antoine de Bourbon, was frequently seen singing the psalms in the “meadow” at the head of a long procession of courtiers and students.

From time to time, however, a Protestant “temple” was attacked and burnt; and once, when one of these onslaughts caused a riot, Gabaston, Chief of the Watch, was hanged for arresting indiscriminately the rioters of both religions. The massacre of Vassy (directed by Guise, who boasted that he would cut the edict of toleration in favour of the Protestants with the edge of his sword) and two civil wars were but the prelude to the terrible Massacre of Saint Bartholomew.

Condé now abjured at Saint-Germain-des-Prés, and Henri de Navarre at the Louvre; but the Reformed Church was far from being destroyed. Only a few months after the massacre, Bérenger de Portal left to this church (whose re-establishment he ardently desired) a sum sufficient for the maintenance of the pastors and the education of candidates for the ministry.

The Rue Saint-Antoine touches the Boulevard Bourdon, thus named in memory of Colonel Bourdon, of the 11th Dragoons, killed at Austerlitz. The building which now dominates all this district is the Arsenal, built by the Emperor in 1807 as a granary of reserve for provisioning Paris; at present occupied by manufacturers and workmen of various kinds. The Arsenal was erected on the site of the “little arsenal,” built by Francis I. The new structure extends south to the Quai Morland, so styled in honour of the colonel of the Chasseurs of the Guard killed at Austerlitz. Augmented and renovated by various architects, the Arsenal contains a library of which the charming writer, Charles Nodier, was at one time the custodian. The collection was first formed by M. d’Argenson and the Marquis de Paulmy, Minister of State, who was the last Governor of the Arsenal before the suppression of this military establishment by Louis XVI. in 1788, on the eve of the Revolution. To gratify his own private tastes as a bibliophile, M. de Paulmy had got together a library of about 100,000 volumes and 10,000 manuscripts, which was increased by the addition of upwards of 26,000 works from the sale of the Duke de la Vallière’s collection. To prevent the dispersion of the books after his death, M. de Paulmy sold the collection in 1785 to the Count of Artois for a certain number of annuities, which the Count omitted to pay. The library was, all the same, looked upon as government property, and confiscated as such in 1790. Enriched by the confiscation of other libraries in the neighbourhood, the Library of the Arsenal was thrown open to the public by the Imperial Government, which at the same time undertook the payment of the annuities due to M. de Paulmy’s heirs. It now comprises about 350,000 volumes, 6,500 manuscripts, and a magnificent collection of prints. It contains, among other interesting documents, the original papers composing the archives of the Bastille, published in part by M. Ravaisson. A clock of ebony and gilt by Louis le Roy, which adorns the entrance, is said to be worth upwards of 40,000 francs; and two of the side rooms are full of curious woodwork, and of interesting objects of all kinds.

In a room occupied at one time by the Duke de Sully are preserved the archives of the Saint-Simonians, including the sealed memoirs of Le Père Enfantin, which are not to be published until thirty years after his death; Enfantin’s colossal bust in the style of Michael Angelo’s Moses, a portrait of Saint-Simon, and another of Mme. Thérèse, the divinity, or at least the Egeria, of the sect.

It was at the Arsenal, when Charles Nodier was librarian, that Victor Hugo, in the midst of a great literary gathering, recited his first poems, soon afterwards to be given to the world under the title of “Odes et Ballades.”

A complete list of the writers who have occupied the post of librarian at the Arsenal would include Ancelot, Paul Lacroix (better known as Le Bibliophile Jacob), Édouard Thierry, Hippolyte Lucas, and the Viscount de Bornier, author of “La Fille de Roland,” “Agamemnon,” “Attila,” and “Mahomet.”

Among the interesting places in the neighbourhood of the Arsenal must be mentioned the little covered market to which the name of Ave Maria has been given. It marks the site of the old tennis court of the Black Cross, where Molière erected his second theatre after the failure of the first; and with so little success that he was imprisoned for debt contracted in the name of the company.

Most of the houses in this curious street are at least three centuries old. Wanderers in search of the quaint will pass from it to the Rue Grenier-sur-l’eau, which leads through the Rue des Barres to the very threshold of the Church of Saint-Gervais. The Rue Grenier-sur-l’eau is so narrow that it would scarcely admit of the passage of a bath chair. It is a lane of walls, without doors or windows, into which light scarcely penetrates.

The Island of Saint-Louis, between the Île Louviers, which precedes it above bridge, and the Island of the City, which follows it below, was nothing but pasture-land until the beginning of Louis XIII.’s reign. It was composed at that time of two islets, a small one called the Isle of Cows, and a larger one known as the Isle of Notre Dame. In 1614 Christophe Marie, general constructor of the bridges of France, undertook to connect these two islets, to furnish them with streets and with a circumference of stone quays, and to join the whole to the right bank by a bridge leading to the Rue des Nonnains d’Hyères. In 1647 the work had been completed, and the island was covered with buildings. Its principal street crosses it lengthwise from east to west. Rue Saint-Louis-en-l’Île it is called, and it contains two remarkable buildings, the Church of Saint-Louis and the Hôtel Lambert. The Church of Saint-Louis was begun in 1664 by Louis Le Vau, continued by Gabriel Leduc, and completed in 1726 by Jacques Doucet, who constructed the cupola. The steeple, thirty metres high, is built of stone, and is in the form of an obelisk. The ornamental sculpture is the work of Jean Baptiste de Champaigne, nephew of the painter, Philippe de Champaigne. The church contains fine paintings by Mignard, Coypel, Lemoine, and Eugène Delacroix.

At the beginning of the Rue Saint-Louis, towards the north, commanding a superb view of the Upper Seine, stands the Hôtel Lambert, built by Le Vau, Louis XIV.’s principal architect. The first proprietor of the Hôtel Lambert, Nicholas Lambert de Thorigny, spared nothing to make it a magnificent abode. The decoration of the interior was entrusted to Lesueur le Brun and other celebrated painters of the time. The treasures which the Hôtel Lambert originally contained have in the course of its varied fortunes been dispersed. It passed after the death of Lambert de Thorigny into the hands of M. de La Haye, farmer-general, and successively into those of the Marquis du Châtelet-Laumont, and of M. Dupin, another farmer-general, brother of the celebrated Mme. d’Épinay. The internal decorations suffered much from these constant changes of ownership. At the death of M. de La Haye, the painting on the ceiling of one of the rooms, “Apollo listening to the prayer of Phaeton,” by Lesueur, was removed from the Hôtel Lambert to the Luxembourg Gallery, where it may still be seen. Most of the other paintings were transferred, at the time of the Revolution, to the Louvre.

Many distinguished persons have resided at the Hôtel Lambert, including Voltaire when he was writing the “Henriade”; and it was here that M. de Montalivet, in 1815, after the battle of Waterloo, had a celebrated interview with Napoleon. Later on the Hôtel Lambert became a girls’ school; then a depot for military stores; until finally, towards 1840, it was offered for sale, and purchased by Prince Czartoryski, to whose family it still belongs.

The Quai d’Anjou, which looks towards the north, is rich in associations of various kinds. The façade of Number 17 bears these words inscribed on a marble slab, “Hôtel de Lauzun, 1657”; and beyond the principal door this other inscription: “Hôtel de Pimodan.” Lieut.-General Count de Pimodan was the first inhabitant of this hotel, which was built for him in 1657, and which he occupied until the time of his fall. It was the abode of the Marquis de La Vallée de Pimodan at the time of the Revolution. Under the reign of Louis Philippe a number of distinguished writers lived successively or simultaneously in the mansion: Roger de Beauvoir, who published a collection of tales called “The Hôtel Pimodan”; Théophile Gautier, Charles Baudelaire, and others. It now gives shelter to a wonderful collection of books and objects of art brought together by Baron Pichon, one of the most eminent members of the Society of French Bibliophiles.

Of the two theatres which shut in the Place du Châtelet, the one to which the ancient building gives its name is much the larger. It accommodates 3,000 spectators, to whom some of the best-known spectacular pieces have been submitted, including Michael Strogoff, Les Pilules du Diable, etc.

The Rue de la Verrerie, just opposite, runs in a direct line to the Rue Saint-Antoine. It has preserved in a remarkable manner its physiognomy of two centuries ago; thanks to the architecture of its fine mansions, which has nobly resisted the ravages of time. Who would ever imagine that this dark and narrow street, which is constantly blocked by the most ordinary traffic, was enlarged in 1671 and 1672 because it was the ordinary route along which Louis XIV., coming from the Castle of the Louvre to that of Vincennes, was in the habit of passing, besides being the road by which foreign ambassadors made their formal entry into Paris?