The line it follows was in a long-past age the Roman road from Lutetia to Orléans—the Via Superior—la grande rue—of early Paris history. Along its course in Roman times the Aqueduc d’Arcueil brought water from Rungis to the Palace of the Thermes (see [p. 138]). It is from end to end a long line of old-time buildings or vestiges of those swept away. The famous couvent des Jacobins extended across the site of the Bibliothèque de l’École de Droit and adjacent structures. At No. 172 stood the Porte St-Jacques in Philippe-Auguste’s great wall.
We see a fine old door at No. 5, a house with two-storied cellars. At a house on the site of No. 218 Jean de Meung wrote the Roman de la Rose. The famous poem was published lower down in the same street.
The church St-Jacques-du-Haut-Pas stands on the high ground we reach at No. 252, a seventeenth-century structure on the site of a chapel built in the fourteenth century by the monks from Italy known as the Pontifici, makers of bridges constructed to give pilgrims the means of crossing a mau pas or mauvais pas, i.e. a dangerous or difficult passage in rivers or roads. The beautiful woodwork within the church—that of the organ and pulpit—was brought here from the ancient, demolished church St-Benoît (see [p. 140]). We notice several good pictures. The fine stained glass once here was all smashed at the Revolution. The hôpital Cochin memorizes in the name of its founder an eighteenth-century vicar there. The churchyard was where Rue de l’Abbé-de-l’Épée now runs, known at one time as Ruelle du Cimetière-St-Jacques.
No. 254 bis, the national Deaf and Dumb Institution, is the ancient commanderie of the Frères hospitaliers de St-Jacques-du-Haut-Pas—the Pontifici—given for the purpose in 1790, partly rebuilt in 1823. The statue of Abbé de l’Épée, inventor of the alphabet for the deaf and dumb, in the court is the work of a deaf and dumb sculptor. The trunk of the tree we see near it is said to be that of an elm planted there by Sully three hundred years ago. At No. 262 we see vestiges of a vacherie, once the farm St-Jacques. At No. 261 we may turn into Rue des Feuillantines, where at No. 10 we see vestiges of the convent that was at one time in part the abode of George Sand, then of Mme Hugo, mother of the poet, and her children; later Jules Sardou lived in the impasse, now merged in the rue. At No. 269 we find some walls of the monastery founded by English Benedictines in 1640, to which a few years later they added a chapel dedicated to St. Edmond. The fabric is still the property of English bishops. It is used as a great music school: “Maison de la Schola Cantorum.” The door seen between two fine old pillars at No. 284 led in olden days to the Carmelite convent where Louise de la Vallière took definite refuge and acted as “sacristan” till her death; Rue du Val-de-Grâce runs where the convent stood.[D]
The military hospital Val-de-Grâce was founded as a convent early in the seventeenth century. Anne d’Autriche installed there the impoverished Benedictines of Val Parfond, or Profond, evacuated from their quarters hard by owing to an inundation from the Bièvre. In their gratitude they changed their name: the nuns of Val Profond became sisters of Val-de-Grâce. In 1645 Louis XIV, the child Anne d’Autriche had so ardently prayed for laid the first stone of the chapel dome, built on the model of St. Peter’s at Rome. The church is now used only for funerals and indispensable military services. The dependency of Val-de-Grâce was built by Catherine de’ Medici, the catacombs lie below it and the surrounding houses.
CHAPTER XX
LE JARDIN DES PLANTES
IT was in the early years of the seventeenth century that the King’s physician bought a piece of waste ground—a butte formed of the refuse of centuries accumulated there—for the culture of the multitudinous herbs and plants which made up the pharmacopia of the age. Thus was born the “Jardin Royal de herbes médicinales” laid out in 1626. Chairs of botany, pharmacy, surgery were instituted and endowed, and in 1650 the garden was thrown open to the public. A century later Buffon was named superintendent of the royal garden. He set himself to reorganize and enlarge. The amphitheatre, the natural history galleries, the chemistry laboratories, the fine lime-tree avenue are all due to him. Distinguished naturalists succeeded one another as directors of the garden, and after the death of Louis XVI a museum of natural history and a menagerie were set up with what was left of the King’s collection at Versailles. Additions and improvements were made in succeeding years till, after the outbreak of war in 1870, the Jardin was bombarded by the Prussians, and during the siege its live-stock largely drawn upon to feed the population of Paris. The garden and its buildings have been added to frequently. The labyrinth is on the site of the hillock bought by Guy de la Brosse, who first laid it out. A granite statue marks the spot where he and two notable travellers were buried. Surrounding streets record the names of great naturalists of different epochs.
In Rue Geoffroy St-Hilaire, once Rue Jardin du Roi, No. 5, now the Police Station, was built in 1760. At No. 30 a wheel once worked turned by the water of the Bièvre, now a malodorous drain-stream hidden beneath the pavement. No. 36 was Buffon’s home. Here he died in 1788. At No. 37 lived Daubenton. At No. 38 stood in olden days the great gate, the Porte-Royale, of the Jardin du Roi, with to its left the hall, a narrow space at that time, where the great surgeon Dionis described to a marvelling assembly of students his wonderful discoveries (1672-73). That small cabinet was the nucleus of the great anthropological museum of succeeding centuries.
In Rue Cuvier, in its early days Rue Derrière-les-Murs de Ste-Victoire, describing accurately its situation, we see at No. 20 a modern fountain (1840) on the site of one put there in 1671 and traces of the abbey St-Victor in the courtyard. The pavilion “de l’Administration” of the Garden is the ancient hôtel Jean Debray (1650), inhabited subsequently by several men of note. At No. 47 Cuvier died in 1832. In the eighteenth-century fiacres, a recently introduced manner of getting about, were to be hired at No. 45. The eleventh-century Rue Linné shows many vestiges of the past. We see Gothic arches of the vanished abbey at No. 4.
In Rue des Fossés St-Bernard, stretching along the line of Philippe-Auguste’s wall, between the site of two great gates: Porte St-Victor, a spot desecrated by the massacres of September, and Porte St-Bernard, we see Halle-aux-Vins, where abbey buildings stood of yore. The Halle-aux-Cuirs, in Rue Censier, is on the site of the famous orphanage “La Miséricorde,” called vulgarly “les Cent Filles” or “les Cent Vierges.” The apprentice from the Arts and Crafts Institution, who should choose one of these orphan maidens for his wife, obtained as her dowry the privilege of becoming at once a full member of the Corporation.