The Collège Ste-Barbe built in the sixteenth century was added to Louis-le-Grand in 1764. Its tower goes by the name Tour Calvin, for this was the Huguenot quarter. Here many of the persecuted Protestants were in hiding at the Massacre of St. Bartholomew. Yet it was at Ste-Barbe that Ignatius Loyola was educated.
Close around Lycée Louis-le-Grand and the Collège de France, we find a number of twelfth-and thirteenth-century streets condemned to demolition, some of their houses already razed, those that remain showing many interesting relics. Rue du Cimetière-St-Benoît, which bordered the cemetery erewhile there; Rue Fromantel, the name a corruption of froid mantel, or manteau, with its interesting old-world dwellings; Impasse Chartrière, where at No. 2 we see an old sign and a niche of the time of Henri IV, who was wont to visit his “belle Gabrielle” here. No. 11 was, it is said, the entrance to the King’s stables. At the junction of Rue Lanneau four streets form the quadrangle where was erewhile the well “Certain,” so named after the vicar of the old church St-Hilaire, once close by, discovered beneath the roadway in 1894. Roman remains of great interest were found at that time below the surface of all these streets. Rue Valette, eleventh century, was once Rue des Sept Voies, for seven thoroughfares met there. At No. 2, in the billiard-room of the old inn, we find vestiges of the church St-Hilaire, once there. No. 19 dates from the fourteenth century, and in the seventeenth century was a meeting-place of the Huguenots who hid in its Gothic two-storied cellars. In Rue Laplace lived Jean de Meung, author of Le Roman de la Rose. At No. 12 we see the entrance of a vanished college, next door to which was the Collège des Écossais.
L’École Polytechnique stands on the site of the college founded in 1304 by Jeanne de Navarre, wife of Philippe le Bel, for seventy poor scholars. It was rebuilt in the fifteenth century. The last vestiges of that rebuilding, a beautiful Gothic chapel, were swept away in 1875. Traces of a Roman cemetery were found in 1906. The present structure dates from the eighteenth century, the work of Gabriel. The house of the Général-Commandant is the ancient Collège de Boncourt, founded in 1357.
In Rue Clovis, at the summit of the Montagne Ste-Geneviève stands the Lycée Henri IV, dating as a school from 1796, known for several subsequent years as Lycée-Napoléon. It recalls vividly the abbey which once stood there. Its tower, known as the “Tour de Clovis,” rises from the foundations of the eleventh-century abbey tower and was for long used as the Paris Observatory. The college kitchen is one of the ancient abbey cellars—cellars in three stories. Some of the walls before us date from the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries. The library founded by Cardinal de la Rochefoucauld is the boys’ dormitory. A cloister and seventeenth-century refectory are there intact. The pupils go up and down a fine eighteenth-century staircase, and study amid interesting frescoes and much beautiful woodwork. New buildings were added to the ancient ones in 1873.
CHAPTER XVII
LA MONTAGNE STE-GENEVIÈVE
RUE DE LA MONTAGNE STE-GENEVIÈVE, leading to the hill-top from Boulevard St-Germain, went in twelfth-century days by the unæsthetic name Rue des Boucheries. Nearly every wall, every stone is ancient. In past ages three colleges at different positions stood on its incline. The sign at No. 40 dates from the time of the Directoire. A statuette of the saint there in Revolution days was labelled, “A la ci-devant Geneviève; Rendez-vous des Sans-Culottes.” And now we have before us the beautiful old church St-Etienne-du-Mont. The place, in very early times a graveyard, was laid out as a square in the fourteenth century and the church burial ground was on the north-western side. The present church dates as a whole from the early years of the seventeenth century, built on the site of a thirteenth-century chapel dedicated to St-Etienne. The abside and the choir were built in early sixteenth-century years, close up against the old basilic of the abbey Ste-Geneviève. Among the people the church is still often referred to as l’Église Ste-Geneviève, chiefly, no doubt, because the tomb of the patron saint of Paris is there. The original châsse—a richly jewel-studded shrine—was destroyed at the Revolution, melted down, its gems confiscated, the bones of the Saint burnt. The stone coffin cast aside as valueless was recovered, filled with such relics of Ste-Geneviève as could be collected from far and near, and is now in the sumptuous shrine to which pilgrimages are continually made. A smaller châsse is solemnly carried round the aisles of the church each year during the “neuvaine” following January 3rd, the revered Saint’s fête day, when services are held all day long, while on the place without a religious fair goes on ... souvenirs of Ste-Geneviève and objects of piety of every description are offered for sale on the stalls set up upon the place from end to end. The church, showing three distinct styles of architecture, Romanesque, Gothic, Renaissance, is especially remarkable for its rood-screen—the only one left in a Paris church. It is rich, too, in exquisite stained glass, beautiful woodwork, fine statuary. We see inscriptions and epitaphs referring to Pascal, Rollin and many other men of note, buried in the church crypt or in the graveyard of past days.
ST-ÉTIENNE-DU-MONT
The Panthéon, the most conspicuous if not the most ancient or most seductive building of this hill-top, was begun as a new church Ste-Geneviève. Louis XV, lying dangerously ill at Metz, made a vow to build on his recovery a church dedicated to the patron saint of Paris. It was not begun till 1755, not solidly constructed then; slips followed the erection of its walls, threatening collapse, and Soufflot, the architect, died of grief thereat. The catastrophe feared did not happen; the building was consolidated. Instead, however, of remaining a church it was declared, in the Revolutionary year 1791, the Panthéon, with the inscription, “Aux Grands Hommes de France, la Patrie reconnaissante.” Napoléon restored it to the ecclesiastical authorities at the Concordat. In 1830 it became again the Panthéon; was once more a church in 1851—then the Panthéon for good—so far—in 1885, when the body of Victor Hugo was carried there in great state. Its façade is copied from the Panthéon of Agrippa at Rome. It is noted for its frescoes illustrative of the life of Ste-Geneviève, by Gros, Chavannes, Laurens and other nineteenth-century artists. Rodin’s “Penseur” below the peristyle was put there in 1906.