STE. CHAPELLE
NOTRE DAME: SOUTH FAÇADE
(FROM THE QUAI DE MONTEBELLO)
Twenty-seven years later Pope Boniface the Eighth raised him to the Calendar of Saints, his day being August 25th. But according to The Golden Legend, which I for one implicitly believe (how can one help it, written as it is?), the posthumous miracles of Louis did not wait for Rome. They began at once. "On that day that S. Louis was buried," we there read, "a woman of the diocese of Sens recovered her sight, which she had lost and saw nothing, by the merits and prayers of the said debonair and meedful king. Not long after, a young child of Burgundy both dumb and deaf of kind, coming with others to the sepulchre or grave of the saint, beseeching him of help, kneeling as he saw that the others did, and after a little while that he thus kneeled were his ears opened and heard, and his tongue redressed and spake well. In the same year a woman blind was led to the said sepulchre, and by the merits of the saint recovered her sight. Also that same year two men and five women, beseeching S. Louis of help, recovered the use of going, which they had lost by divers sickness and languors.
"In the year that S. Louis was put or written in the catalogue of the holy confessors, many miracles worthy to be prized befell in divers parts of the world at the invocation of him, by his merits and by his prayers. Another time at Evreux a child fell under the wheel of a water-mill. Great multitude of people came thither, and supposing to have kept him from drowning, invoked God, our Lady and his saints to help the said child, but our Lord willing his saint to be enhanced among so great multitude of people, was there heard a voice saying that the said child, named John, should be vowed unto S. Louis. He then, taken out of the water, was by his mother borne to the grave of the saint, and after her prayer done to S. Louis, her son began to sigh and was raised on life."
We leave the island by the Pont Sully, first looking at the statue of Barye, the sculptor of Barbizon, many of whose best small bronzes are in the Louvre (to say nothing of the shops of the dealers in the Rue Laffitte) and several of his large groups in the public gardens of Paris, one, for example, being near the Orangery in the Tuileries. Barye's monument standing here at the east end of the Ile St. Louis balances Henri IV. at the west end of the Ile de la Cité.
Crossing to the mainland we ought to look at the old houses on the Quai des Célestins, particularly the old Hôtel de la Valette, now the Collège Massillon, into whose courtyard one should boldly peep. At No. 32 we touch very interesting history, for here stood, two and a half centuries ago, Molière's Illustre Théâtre, the stage entrance to which may be seen at 15 Rue de l'Ave Marie.
And now for the Marais.
CHAPTER V
THE MARAIS
A £32,000,000 Rebuilding Scheme—Romance and Intrigue—The Temple—The Archives—Illustrious Handwriting—The "Uncle" of Paris—The Wall of Philip Augustus—Old Palaces now Rookeries—The Carnavalet—The Perfect Museum—Latude—Napoleon—Madame de Sévigné—Chained Streets—John Law—The Rue St. Martin.
The Marais is that district of old streets and palaces which is bounded on the south by the Rue St. Antoine, on the east by the Rue du Turenne, on the west by the Rue du Temple, and fades away in the north somewhere below the Rue de Bretagne. The Rue des Francs Bourgeois is its central highway east and west.