Rue Montmartre, crossing Rue Étienne-Marcel and going on into the arrondissement II, dates at this end—its commencement—from the close of the eleventh century. In Revolution days it was known as Rue Mont-Marat! As long as Paris had fortified boundary walls there was always a Porte Montmartre, moved northward three times, as the city bounds extended. The Porte of Philippe-Auguste was where the house No. 30 now stands, and this part of the street was known then as Rue Porte-Montmartre. The Passage de la Reine de Hongrie memorizes a certain dame de la Halle in whom Marie-Antoinette saw a remarkable likeness to her mother, the Queen of Hungary. The woman became for her generation “la Reine de Hongrie”—the alley where she dwelt was called by this name. She shared not only the title but the fate of royalty: was beheaded by the guillotine.
Rue Montorgueil, beginning here and leading to the higher ground called when the Romans ruled in Gaul “Mons Superbus,” now the levelled boulevard Bonne-Nouvelle and its surrounding streets, was known in the thirteenth century as Mont Orgueilleux. In bygone days, the Parisians strolled out to the Mont Orgueilleux to eat oysters. There was a famous oyster-bed on the site of the house now razed where, in 1780, was born that exquisite song and ballad writer, Béranger. The ancient house, No. 32, is said to have been the home of the architect, Jean Goujon. The little side-street Rue Mauconseil dates from 1250, and tradition says its name is due to the mauvais conseil given within the walls of the hôtel de Bourgoyne, close by, which led to the assassination of the duc d’Orléans by Jean Sans Peur. In Revolution days, therefore, it was promptly renamed for the nonce Rue du Bon Conseil! At No. 48 we find a famous tripe-eating house. No. 47 was once the Central Sedan Chair Office. At No. 51 we see interesting signs over the door, and painted panels signed by Paul Baudry within (1864). Nos. 64, 72 is the old sixteenth-century inn, the “Compas d’Or,” and the famous restaurant Philippe. The coachyard of the inn is little changed from the days when coaches plied between that starting-place and Dreux. The restaurant du Rocher de Cancale, at No. 78, dating from 1820, where the most celebrated men of letters and art of the nineteenth century met and dined, was at first “Le Petit Rocher,” then the successor of the ancient restaurant at No. 59 dating from the eighteenth century, where the dîners du Caveau and the dîners du Vaudeville were eaten by gay literary and artistic dîneurs of olden time.
Rue Turbigo is modern and makes us think regretfully of ancient streets and of the apse of the church St-Elisabeth demolished to make way for it. Turning down Rue St-Denis, the famous “Grande Chaussée de Monsieur St-Denis” of ancient days, the road along which legend tells us the saint, coming from the heights above, walked carrying his head after decapitation, we find it, from this point to the vicinity of the Châtelet, rich in historic buildings and vestiges of a past age. Kings on their way to Notre-Dame entered Paris in state along this old road; it was connected more or less closely with every political event of bygone times, with Parisian pleasures too, for there of old the mystery plays went on. Curious old streets and passages open out of it: at 279 the quaint Rue Ste-Foy. In the court of No. 222 we see the hôtel St. Chaumont, its façade on boulevard Sebastopol, dating from 1630.
The church we come to at No. 92 dedicated to St. Leu and St. Gilles was built in the early years of the thirteenth century on the site of an earlier church, a dependent of the Abbaye St-Magloire close by, suppressed at the Revolution. Subsequent restorations, and the building in the eighteenth century of a subterranean chapel for the knights of the Holy Sépulcre, have resulted in an interesting old church of mingled Gothic and Renaissance style; its apse was lopped off to make way for the modern boulevard Sébastopol. The would-be assassin Cadoudal hid for three days crouched up against the figure of Christ in the chapel beneath the chancel (1804). Rue des Lombards dates from the thirteenth century, and at one or two of its houses, notably No. 62, we find an underground hall with vaulted roof and Gothic windows. At No. 56 we see an open corner. It is “ground accurst.” The house of two Protestant merchants who in 1579 were put to death for their “evil practices!” once stood there. Their dwelling was razed and a pyramid and crucifix were set up on the spot, soon afterwards removed to the cemetery des Innocents hard by.
The chemist’s shop at No. 44, “Au Mortier d’Or,” united now to its neighbour “A la Barbe d’Or,” dates, as regards its foundation, from the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. In the window we see an open volume printed in 1595 with the engraved portrait of the founder.
Rue des Innocents was opened in 1786 across the site of the graveyard of the church des Saints-Innocents, founded in 1150 and which stood till 1790. More than a million bodies are said to have been buried in that churchyard. In 1780 the cemetery was turned into a market-place. But it was again used as a burial ground for victims of the Revolution of 1830. Their bones lie now beneath the Colonne de Juillet on the Place de la Bastille. The market-place became a square: “Le Square des Innocents.” The fine old fountain dating from 1550, the work of the famous sculptors Pierre Lescot and Jean Goujon, was taken from its site in the Rue St-Denis, restored by the best sculptors of the day, and set up there in 1850. The beautiful portal of the ancient bureau des Marchandes-lingères was placed there in more recent times. The ground floor of most of the old houses of this street are ancient charniers, many of them built by one Nicolas Flamel. Therein were laid in past days the bones periodically gathered from the graveyard. The name “Cabaret du Caveau” at No. 15 tells its own tale. In Rue Berger, formed along the line of several demolished streets of old, we see some ancient signs, but little else of interest. Old signs too, in Rue de la Cossonnerie, so named from the cossonniers, i.e. poultry-merchants, whose market was here and which was known as early as 1182 as Via Cochonerie. Rue des Prêcheurs is another twelfth-century street and there we see many ancient houses: Nos. 6-8, etc. Rue Pirouette, one of the most ancient of Paris streets, recalls the days of the pilori des Halles, when its victims, forced to turn from side to side, made la pirouette. Here the duc d’Angoulême had his head cut off under Louis XI, and the duc de Nemours in 1477. At No. 5 we see the ancient doorway of the demolished hôtellerie du Haume (fourteenth century), at No. 9 was the cabaret de l’Ange Gabriel (now razed), at No. 13 vestiges of an ancient mansion. A few old houses still stand in the Rue de la Grande Truanderie (thirteenth century). Rue de la Petite Truanderie, of the same date, was once noted for its old well, “le Puits d’Amour,” in the small square half-way down the street, of old the truands’ quarter (see [p. 56]).
CHAPTER IV
THE PALAIS DE JUSTICE
THE history of Paris and of France, from the earliest days of their story, is connected with the Palais de Justice on the western point of the island on the Seine. The palace stands on the site of the habitation of the rulers of Lutetia in the days of the Romans, of the first Merovingian and of the first Capetian kings. The present building, often reconstructed, restored, enlarged, dates in its foundations and some other parts from the time of Robert le Pieux. King Robert built the Conciergerie. Under Louis IX the palace was again considerably enlarged; the kitchens of St. Louis are an interesting feature in the palace as we know it. In 1434, Charles VII gave up the palace to the Parliament. It met in the great hall above St. Louis’ kitchens, and round an immense table there law tribunals assembled. For the French Parliament of those times was in some sort a great law-court. Guizot describes it as: “la cour souveraine du roi, la cour suprême du royaume.” Known in its earliest days as “Le Conseil du Roi,” its members were the grandees of the kingdom: vassals, prelates, officers of State, and it was supposed to follow the King wherever he went, though as a matter of fact it rarely moved from Paris. When, in course of time, it was considered desirable that its members should all be able not only to read but to write, the great nobles of that age declared they were not going to change their swords for a writing-desk and many withdrew, to be replaced by men of lesser rank but greater skill in other directions than that of arms, and who came to be regarded as the noblesse de la robe—distinct from la noblesse de l’épee.
LA TOUR DE L’HORLOGE, LES “TOURS POINTUES” DE LA CONCIERGERIE ET LE MARCHÉ AUX FLEURS