RUE VIEILLE-DU-TEMPLE

Rue Vieille-du-Temple, which begins its long course opposite the Mairie, has lost its first numbers. This old street shows us interesting features at every step. No. 15, hôtel de Vibraye. No. 20, Impasse de l’hôtel d’Argenson. No. 24, hôtel of the Maréchal d’Effiat, father of Cinq Mars. The short Rue du Trésor at its side was so named in 1882 from the treasure-trove found beneath the hôtel when cutting the street, gold pieces of the time of King Jean and Charles V in a copper vase, a sum of something like 120,000 francs in the money of to-day. At No. 42 opens Rue des Rosiers; roses once grew in gardens there. At No. 43 Passage des Singes, leading into Rue des Guillemites, once Rue des Singes. No. 45 shows a façade claiming to date back to the year 1416. No. 47, hôtel des Ambassadeurs de Hollande, recalling the days when Dutch diplomats dwelt there and took persecuted Protestants under their protection, is on the site of the hôtel of Jean de Rieux, before which the duc d’Orléans met his death at the hands of Jean Sans Peur, the habitation of historic persons and events until Revolution days, when it was taken for dancing saloons. Here we see splendid vestiges of past grandeur: vaulted ceilings, sculptures, frescoes. The Marché des Blancs-Manteaux, in the street opening at No. 46, is part of an ancient mansion. Turning down Rue des Hospitalières-St-Gervais, recalling the hospital once there, we find in Rue des Francs-Bourgeois, at No. 35, an old hôtel. At No. 31, l’hôtel d’Albret, its first stone laid in 1550 by Connétable Anne de Montmorency, restored in the eighteenth century. At No. 25, one side of the fine hôtel Lamoignon. Crossing Rue des Rosiers we turn down Rue des Écouffes, an ancient street of pawnbrokers, where in a house on the site of No. 20, Philippe de Champaigne, the great painter, lived and died (1674). Rue du Roi de Sicile records the existence there, and on land around, of the palace of Charles d’Anjou, brother of St. Louis, crowned King of Naples and Sicily in 1266. The mansion changed hands many times and in 1698 became the hôtel de la Grande Force, a noted prison. Part of it became later the Caserne des Pompiers in Rue Sévigné; the rest was demolished. On the site of the house No. 2 lived Bault and his wife, jailers of Marie-Antoinette. And here, at the corner of Rue Malher, Princesse de Lamballe and many of her compeers were slain in the “Massacres of September.”

Rue Ferdinand-Duval, till 1900 from about the year 1000 Rue des Juifs, is full of old-time relics. At No. 20 we find a courtyard and hôtel known in past days as l’hôtel des Juifs. Nos. 18 and 16, site of the hospital du Petit St-Antoine in pre-Revolution days, of a famous shop store under the Empire.

Rue Pavée dates from the early years of the thirteenth century, the first street in Paris to be paved. Here at Nos. 11 and 13 lived the duke of Norfolk, British Ambassador in 1533. At No. 12 we find two old staircases, once those of an ancient hôtel incorporated in the prison of La Force. At No. 24 stands the fine old hôtel de Lamoignon, rebuilt on the site of an older structure, by Diane de France, daughter of Henri II (sixteenth century), the natal house of Lamoignon de Malesherbes, renowned for his defence of Louis XVI. Alphonse Daudet lived here for a time. Close by was the prison la Petite Force, a woman’s prison, too well known in Revolution days by numerous notable women of the time. In Rue de Sévigné, which begins here, we turn at No. 11 into the garden of a bathing establishment on the site of a smaller hôtel Lamoignon, where in 1790 Beaumarchais built the théâtre du Marais, otherwise l’Athénée des Étrangers, with materials from the demolished Bastille. Here we see before us one single wall of the demolished prison de la Force, and an indication of the spot where thirty royalist prisoners were put to death. Rue de Jarente, so named from the Prior of the monastic institution, Ste-Catherine du Val des Escholiers, erewhile here, shows us an old fountain in the Impasse de la Poissonnerie. Rue d’Ormesson stretches across the eighteenth-century priory fish market.

CHAPTER XII
THE OLD QUARTIER ST-POL

WE come now to the interesting old-world quarter behind and surrounding the church St-Paul and the Lycée Charlemagne, the site of the palace St-Pol of ancient days. The church, as we see it, dates from 1641, replacing a tiny Jesuit chapel built in the previous century and dedicated to St. Louis. Its first stone was laid by Louis XIII, and the chapel built from the designs of two Jesuit priests, aided by the architect Vignole. Hence the term Jesuite used in France for the ornate Renaissance style of architecture we see in the façade of the church before us. Richelieu, newly ordained, celebrated his first Mass here in 1641, and defrayed the cost of completing the church by the erection of the great portal. The heart of Louis XIII and of Louis XIV were buried here beneath sumptuous monuments. At the Revolution the Tiers État, held their first assembly in the old church St-Pol, soon razed to the ground by the insurgents. The Jesuits’ chapel was saved from destruction by the books from suppressed convents which had been piled up within it, forming thus a barricade. The dome was the second erected in Paris. The holy water scoops were a gift from Victor Hugo at the baptism of his first child born in the parish.

RUE ÉGINHARD