INTERIOR OF ST-ÉTIENNE-DU-MONT (JUBÉ)
The Faculté de Droit, No. 10, is Soufflot’s work (1772-1823). The Bibliothèque Ste-Geneviève, quite modern (1884), covers the site of the demolished Collège Montaigu, founded in 1314. Ignatius Loyola, Erasmus and Calvin were pupils there. All the surrounding streets stretch along the site of ancient buildings, convents, monasteries, etc., swept away but leaving here and there interesting traces. In Rue Lhomond débris of the potteries once there have been unearthed. Michelet lived for a time at the ancient hôtel de Flavacourt. No. 10, incorporated later in the École Ste-Geneviève, of which the chief entrance door is a vestige of the hôtel de Juigné, was the private abode of the Archbishop of Paris in pre-Revolution days. Another part of the school was the home of Abbé Edgeworth, confessor to Louis XVI in his last days. Yet another was the Séminaire des Anglais, founded under Louis XIV. We find a fine façade and balconies in the courtyard at No. 29, once the abode of a religious community, now the lay “Institution Lhomond.”
The Séminaire des Missions des Colonies Françaises at No. 30 dates from the time of Louis XIV. Fine staircase and chapel. The cellars of the modern houses from No. 48 to No. 54 are those of the convent which erewhile stood above them.
In Rue des Irlandais we see the college founded in 1755 for Irish, Scottish and English priest-students. In Rue Rataud, once Rue des Vignes, which led to a cemetery for persons who had died of the plague, is, at No. 3, the orphanage of l’Enfant Jésus, formerly “Les Cent Filles,” where the duchesse d’Angoulême, daughter of Louis XVI, had fifty young orphan girls educated yearly at her own expense.
CHAPTER XVIII
IN THE VALLEY OF THE BIÈVRE
EMPHATICALLY a street of the past is the old Rue Mouffetard, its name a corruption perhaps of Mont Cérarius, the name of the district under the Romans, or derived maybe from the old word mouffettes, referring to the exhalations of the Bièvre, flowing now below ground here, never very odorous since the days when, coming sweet and clear from the southern slopes, it was put to city uses, industrial and other, on entering Paris. Every house along the course of this street has some curious old-time feature, an ancient sign, an old well, old doors, old courtyards. Quaint old streets lead out of it. The market on the place by the old church St-Médard extends up its slope.
In the sordid shops which flourish on the ground-floor of almost every house, or on stalls set on the threshold, one sees an assortment of foodstuffs rarely brought together in any other corner of the city, and articles of clothing of most varied kind and style and date.
The church dating from the twelfth century, partially rebuilt and restored in later times, was for several centuries a dependency of the abbey Ste-Geneviève. Its graveyard, for long past a market-place and a square, was in the eighteenth century the scene of the notorious scandale Médard. Among the graves of noted Jansenists buried there miraculous cures were supposed to take place. Women and girls fell into ecstasies. The number of these convulsionists grew daily. At last the King, Louis XV, ordered the cemetery to be closed. A witty inhabitant of the district managed to get near one of the tombstones the morning after the King’s command was made known and wrote thereon: