Rue Meslay, opening out of Rue St-Martin at this point, dates from the first years of the eighteenth century, when it was Rue du Rempart. No. 49 was the home of the last Commandant du Guet. At No. 46 Aurore Dupin, known as George Sand, the famous novelist, was born in 1804. At No. 40 we see the fine old hôtel, with a fountain in the court, where in eighteenth-century days dwelt the Commandant de la Garde de Paris, the garde having replaced the guet (the Watch) in 1771.
RUE BEAUBOURG
Rue Beaubourg, stretching from Rue Rambuteau to Rue Turbigo, and the streets and passages leading out of it, show us many traces of bygone times. At No. 28 we find subterranean halls, with hooks where iron chains were once held fast—for this was an ancient prison—and a salon Louis XVI, with traces of ancient frescoes and sculpture. The city wall of Philippe-Auguste passed where the house No. 39 now stands. At No. 62, opposite which stretched the graveyard of St-Nicolas-des-Champs, was the palace of the bishops of Châlons, taken later to form part of a Carmelite convent suppressed in 1793. In a later revolutionary period—when Louis-Philippe was on the throne of France—the Paris insurrections centred here and horrible scenes took place on this spot[B].
In Rue au Maire, a secular official, mayor or bailiff of the Abbey, had his seat of office. In the Passage des Marmites (Saucepan Street) dwelt none but chaudronniers (coppersmiths and tinkers). We see ancient houses all along Rue Volta, and Rue des Vertus, so called by derision, having been the Rue des Vices, is made up of quaint old houses. Most of the houses, rather sordid, in Rue des Gravilliers, are ancient. No. 44 is said to have been the meeting-place of the secret Society “l’Internationale” in the time of Napoléon III. At Nos. 69 and 70 we see traces of the hôtel built by the grandfather of Gabrielle d’Estrées. At No. 88 the accomplices of Cadoudal, of the infernal machine conspiracy, were arrested.
Rue Chapon, formerly Capon, is named from the Capo, i.e. the cape worn by the Jews who in thirteenth-century days were its chief inhabitants. Its western end, known till 1851 as Rue du Cimetière St-Nicolas-des-Champs, shows many vestiges of past time. No. 16 was the hôtel of Madame de Mandeville, at first a nun-novice, to become in the time of Louis XV a celebrated courtesan. No. 13 was the hôtel of the archbishops of Reims, then of the bishops of Châlons, ceded in 1619 to the Carmelites. A big door and other interesting vestiges remain.
Rue de Montmorency is named from the fine old hôtel at No. 5, where the Montmorency lived from 1215 to 1627, when the last descendant of the famous Constable Mathieu perished on the scaffold. The street is rich in historic houses, historic associations. The stretch between Rue Beaubourg and Rue du Temple was known till 1768 as Rue Courtauvillain, originally Cour-au-Vilains—the Vilains, not necessarily “villains,” were the serfs or “common people” of bygone days. There lived Madame de Sévigné before making hôtel Carnavalet her home. No. 51 is the Maison du Grand Pignon, the big gable, owned, about the year 1407, by Nicolas Flamel and his wife Pernelle. Nicolas was a reputed schoolmaster of the age who made a good thing out of his establishment and was cited as having discovered the philosopher’s stone. On his death, he bequeathed his house and all his goods to the church St-Jacques-la-Boucherie, of which la Tour St-Jacques alone remains (see pp. 95, 97).
Rue Grenier-St-Lazare, in the thirteenth century Rue Garnier de St-Ladre, shows us interesting old houses, and at No. 4 a Louis XVI staircase.
Rue Michel-le-Comte, another street of ancient houses, erewhile hôtels of the noblesse, reminds one of the popular punning phrase, “Ça fait la Rue Michel,” i.e. ça fait le compte—Michel-le-Comte. No. 28 was at one time inhabited by comte Esterhazy, Hungarian Ambassador. Impasse de Clairvaux, Rue du Maure (fourteenth century, known at one time as Cour des Anglais), and Rue Brantôme make a cluster of ancient streets, with many vestiges of past ages.