ÉGLISE ST-SÉVERIN
Rue de la Parcheminerie (thirteenth century), in part demolished recently, in its early days Rue des Escrivains, was for long the exclusive habitation of whoever had to do with the making and selling of books. The “hôtel des Pères Tranquilles” once there has gone. Two old houses, Nos. 6 and 7, were in the thirteenth-century dependencies of Norwich Cathedral for English student-monks. In Rue Boutebrie, one side entirely rebuilt of late, dwelt the illuminators of sixteenth-century scrolls and books. We see a characteristic ancient gable at No. 6. This house and No. 8 have ancient staircases. Crossing Rue St-Jacques we turn into Rue St-Julien-le-Pauvre, “le Vieux Chemin” of past times. Through the old arched doorway we see there, surmounted by a figure of Justice, was the abode of a notable eighteenth-century Governor of the Petit-Châtelet, whose duty was that of hearing both sides in student quarrels and pronouncing judgment. The church we see was the University church of the twelfth and several succeeding centuries. University meetings were held there and many a town and gown riot, or a merely gown riot, took place within its walls. The slab above the old door tells of its cession to the administrators of the hôtel-Dieu in 1655. Some of its stones date from the ninth or, maybe, from an even earlier century; for the church before us was a rebuilding in the twelfth of one erected in the ninth century to replace the hostel and chapel built there in the sixth century and overthrown by the Normans—the hostel where Gregory of Tours had made a stay. The ancient Gothic portal and two bays falling to decay were lopped off in 1560. The well we see in the courtyard was once within the church walls. Another well of miracle-working fame, on the north side, had a conduit to the altar. Passing through a door near the vestry we find ourselves on the site of the ancient annexe of the hôtel-Dieu, razed a few years ago, and see on one side the chevet of the church with its quaint belfry and flight of steps on the roof, on the other a high, strong, moss-grown wall said to be a remnant of the boundary wall of Philippe-Auguste. In 1802 the church was given to the Greek Catholics of Paris—Melchites. The iconostase, therefore, very beautiful, is an important feature. We see some very ancient statues, and a more modern one of Montyon, founder of the Virtue-prizes bestowed annually by the Académie Française.
HÔTEL LOUIS XV, RUE DE LA PARCHEMINERIE
In Rue Galande, what remains of it, we see several interesting old houses, and on the door of No. 42 a bas-relief showing St. Julien in a ship. Rue du Fouarre, one side gone save for a single house, once Rue des Escholiers, recalls the decree of Pope Urban V that students of the Schools must hear lectures humbly sitting on the ground on bundles of straw which they were bound themselves to provide. Benches were too luxurious for the students of those days. In this street of the “Écoles des Quatre Nations,” France, Normandie, Alsace, Picardie, Dante listened to the instruction of Brunetto Latini. No. 8 with its old door is on the site of the “École de Normandie.” The street close by, named in memory of the great Italian poet, is modern. In Rue Domat stood, till the nineteenth century, the walls of the suppressed convent de Cornouailles founded by a Breton in 1317. Rue des Anglais, the resort of English students from the time of Philippe-Auguste, was famous till recent days for the Cabaret du Père Lunette, about to be razed. The first Père Lunette went about his business wearing enormous spectacles. The second landlord of the inn, gaining possession of its founder’s “specs,” wore them as a badge, slung across his chest. Rue de l’hôtel Colbert has no reference to the statesman. In early times it was Rue des Rats. Rue des Trois-Portes recalls the thirteenth-century days when three houses only formed the street. No. 10, connected with No. 13 Rue de la Bûcherie, the log-selling street, shows us the ancient “Faculté de Médicine,” surrounded in past days by the garden, the first of the kind, where medical men and medical students cultivated the herbs necessary for their physic. The interesting old Gothic structure, more than once threatened with demolition, has been classed as an historical monument, under State care therefore, and reconstructed as the Maison des Étudiants. The students were very keen about the completion of their new house on its time-honoured site, and when the masons in course of reconstruction went on strike, the young men threw aside their books, donned a workman’s jacket, or failing that doffed their coats and rolled up their shirt-sleeves and set to work with all youth’s ardour as bricklayers. Their zeal was greater, however, than their technical knowledge or their physical fitness, and their work left much to be desired, as the French say. Then fortunately the strike ended.
