THE RUE DES PROUVAIRES AND THE RUE SAINT-EUSTACHE ABOUT 1850
Water-colour by Villeret (Carnavalet Museum)
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."
THE CENTRAL MARKET FOOT-PAVEMENT, NEAR THE CHURCH OF SAINT-EUSTACHE, IN 1867
Drawn by A. Maignan
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.