No. 398 is perhaps in part the very house, more probably the house entirely rebuilt, inhabited for a time by Robespierre and some of his family and by Couthon. No. 400 was the Imperial bakery in the time of Napoléon III. No. 271, now a modern erection, was till quite recently the famous cabaret du St-Esprit, dating from the seventeenth century, where during the Terreur sightseers gathered to watch the tragic chariots pass laden with victims for the guillotine. Marie-Antoinette passed that way and was subjected to that cruel scrutiny.
The greater number of the streets of this arrondissement running northwards start from Rue de Rivoli, and cross Rue St-Honoré, or start from the latter. Beginning at the western end of Rue Rivoli, we see Rue St-Florentin dating from 1640, so named more than a century later when the comte de St-Florentin deputed the celebrated architects Chalgrin and Gabriel to build the mansion we see at No. 2. It was a splendid mansion then, with surrounding galleries, fine gardens, a big fountain, and was the home of successive families of the noblesse. In 1792, it was the Venetian Embassy, under the Terreur a saltpeter factory. At No. 12 was an inn where people gathered to watch the condemned pass to the scaffold.
Rue Cambon, so named after the Conventional author of the Grand Livre de La Dette Publique, dates in its lower part, when it was Rue de Luxembourg, from 1719, prolonged a century later. Some of the older houses still stand, and have interesting vestiges of past days; others, razed in recent years, have been replaced by modern constructions. The new building, “Cour des Comptes,” built to replace the Palais du Quai d’Orsay burnt by the Communards in 1871, is on the site of the ancient convent of the Haudriettes, suppressed in 1793, when it became the garrison of the Cent Suisses, later a financial depot. The convent chapel, left untouched, serves as the catechists’ chapel for the Madeleine, and has services attended especially by Poles.
In Rue Duphot, opened in 1807 across the old garden of the Convent of the Conception, we see at No. 12 an ancient convent arch and courtyard.
Rue Castiglione (1811) stretches across the site of the convents Les Feuillants and Les Capucins.
In Rue du Mont-Thabor, stretching where was once a convent garden, a vaulted roof and chapel-like building at No. 24, at one time an artist’s studio, remains of the convent once there, is about to be razed. Orsini died at No. 10; Alfred de Musset at No. 6 (1857).
PLACE VENDÔME
In the year 1685 Louis XIV set about the erection of a grand place intended as a monument in his own honour. The site chosen was that of the hôtel Vendôme which had recently been razed, and of the neighbouring convent of the Capucins. The death of Louvois—1691—interrupted this work. It was taken in hand a year or two later by Mansart and Boffrand, who designed in octagonal form the vast place called at first Place des Conquêtes, then Place Louis-le-Grand. A statue of Louis XIV was set up there in 1699. The land behind the grand façades and houses erected by the State was sold for building purposes to private persons, and the notorious banker Law and his associates finished the Place in 1720. Royal fêtes were held there and popular fairs. Soon it was the scene of financial agitations, then of Revolutionary tumults. On August 10, 1792, heads of the guillotined were set up there on spikes and the square was named Place des Piques. A bonfire was made of volumes referring to the title-deeds of the French noblesse and the archives of the St-Esprit; and in 1796 the machines which had been used to make assignats were solemnly burnt there. In 1810 the Colonne d’Austerlitz was set up where erewhile had stood the statue of Louis XIV, made of cannons taken from the enemy, its bas-reliefs illustrative of the chief events of the momentous year 1805. It was surmounted by a statue of Napoléon, which, in 1814, the Royalists vainly attempted to pull down by means of ropes. It was taken away later, the drapeau blanc put up in its stead. Napoléon’s statue, melted down, was transformed into the statue of Henri IV on the Pont-Neuf, replacing the original statue set up there (see [p. 340]). In 1833, Napoléon went up again, a newly designed statue, replaced in its turn by a reproduction of the first one in 1865. In 1871, the Column was overturned by the Communards, but set up anew by the French Government under MacMahon.
Every mansion on the Place, most of them now commercial hotels or business-houses, was at one time or another the habitation of noted men and women, and recalls historic events. The façades of Nos. 9 and 7 are classed as historic monuments; their preservation cared for by the State. No. 23 was the scene of Law’s speculations after his forced move from his quarters in the old Rue Quincampoix. At No. 6 Chopin died.
