OLD HOUSE AT THE CORNER OF THE RUE DES ÉLUS
AND THE PLACE DES MARCHÉS, REIMS.
RENAISSANCE HOUSE IN THE RUE DES DEUX ANGES, REIMS.
Proceeding along the Rue de Vesle and the neighbouring Rue des Tapissiers, we find ourselves once more in the Place Royale, the principal side of which is occupied by the once notable Hôtel des Fermes, where, in the days of the ancien régime, the farmers-general of the Champagne were accustomed to receive the revenues of the province. A bronze statue rises in the centre of the Place, which from its Roman costume and martial bearing might be taken for some hero of antiquity, did not the inscription on the pedestal apprise us that it is intended for the ‘wise, virtuous, and magnanimous Louis XV.,’ a misuse of terms which has caused a Transatlantic Republican to characterise the monument as a brazen lie. Leading out of the Place Royale is the Rue de Cérès, in which there is a modernised sixteenth-century house claiming to be the birthplace, on the 29th August 1619, of Jean Baptiste Colbert, son of a Reims wool-merchant, and the famous minister who did so much to consolidate the finances of the State which the royal voluptuary, masquerading at Reims in Roman garb, afterwards made such dreadful havoc of.
HEADS SURMOUNTING THE PRINCIPAL WINDOWS OF THE RENAISSANCE HOUSE IN THE RUE DES DEUX ANGES.
