THE RUE SAINT-JULIEN-LE-PAUVRE
Etching by Martial
The artist Le Brun's mother is buried in the Saint-Charles chapel of the church of Saint-Nicolas-du-Chardonneret, and also Pierre de Chamousset, the inventor of the petty Postal service. Parisian ladies, bless his memory!
The church of Saint-Julien-le-Pauvre is set apart for the Greek ritual. Enclosed on its sides and rear by the ancient buildings of the Hôtel-Dieu, this melancholy-looking chapel is falling to ruin; a stopped-up well with meagre weeds growing from its border-stones seems to guard the door, which opens on a dirty, rubbish-strewn courtyard where a few half-starved fowls peck their scanty meal. It is a nook of poverty and suffering. The walls are damp and dingy; in these sombre yards, where a few sickly trees barely exist, all is solitude and abandon. Only three years ago, stretchers or ambulance carriages still stopped from time to time in it, and from them were taken victims of crime, disease, or accident, that had fallen in the street. Through the vast Paris, busy and indifferent, monopolised by its pleasures or its cares, one or another human wreck was brought to the Assistance Publique in this dismal Rue Saint-Julien-le-Pauvre with its suggestive name.
THE JARDIN DES PLANTES—THE CEDAR OF LEBANON AND THE LABYRINTH
Water-colour by Hilaire (National Library)
To refresh ourselves after so painful a spectacle, let us come back to the lovely Parisian quays, and walk along the fair river, quivering in the daylight or in the moon's nightly rays; let us pass by the beautiful mansions of the Miramionnes, of Nesmond, of Judge Rolland, in front of the wine market—"catacombs of thirst," and pause at the old Jardin des Plantes, dear to Buffon. A touch of the charm of things past, but not entirely vanished, lingers yet!