Rue St-André-des-Arts, where in ancient days dwelt the makers and vendors of “arcs,” i.e. bows, and along which the pious passed to pray at St-André on abbey territory for those who had suffered death by burning, (les Arsis) was in long-gone times a vine-bordered path reaching to the city wall. It was known at one time as Rue St-Germain, and was a great shoemaking street. It is rich in vestiges of the past. Almost every house has interesting features. The modern Lycée Fénelon at No. 45, the first girls’ lycée in Paris, stands on the site of the ancient hôtel of the ducs d’Orléans. No. 52, hôtel du Tillet-de-la-Bussière. Nos. 47-49, on the site of the ancient mansion of the Kings of Navarre and of the Vieuville, of which some traces are still seen. At No. 11, a house on the site of the place where stood the old church, Gounod was born in 1818. Opening out of it is the Passage du Commerce-St-André, cut in 1776, across the site of Philippe-Auguste’s great wall of which, at No. 4, we find the base of a tower, and in the Cour de Rohan, more correctly perhaps Rouen, a very perfect fragment of the city rampart. The archbishops of Rouen had an hôtel here, and the vestiges we see before us are those of a mansion built on its site by King Henri II for Diane de Poitiers. Rue des Grands-Augustins, in part on the site of an ancient Augustine convent, was, in the thirteenth century, Rue l’Abbé de St-Denis. Many of its houses show interesting traces of the past. The reputed restaurant Lapérouse at No. 1 is a Louis XV hôtel. At No. 5 and No. 7 remains of the ancient hôtel d’Hercule, noted for its mythological paintings and tapestries, once the Paris abode of the princess of Savoie Carignan. At No. 3 Rue Pont de Lodi, opening at No. 6, we see traces of the convent refectory. Littré was born at No. 21 (1808). In 1841 Heine lived at No. 25. Sardou in his youth at No. 26. Augustin Thierry lived for ten years in a house near the quay.
Almost every house in Rue Christine, named after the second daughter of Henri IV, dates from the seventeenth century.
CHAPTER XXIV
IN THE VICINITY OF PLACE ST-MICHEL
AN ancient place and part of the old Rue de l’Hirondelle, and an ancient chapel stretched in bygone days where now we see the broad new Place St-Michel. The colossal fountain we see there was put up in 1860, replacing a seventeenth-century fountain on the ancient place, which lay a little more to the south. Of the boulevard—the famous “Boule Miche”—we will speak later (see [p. 306]).
Turning into Rue de l’Hirondelle, in the twelfth century Rue l’Arondale-en-Laac, then Rue Herondalle, we see remains of the ancient Collège d’Antin, founded in 1371, and an eighteenth-century house on the site of the mansion of the bishop of Chartres previously there. Rue Gît-le-Cœur, probably indicated in fourteenth-century days the dwelling-place of the King’s cook ... Gille his name; cœur, a misspelling for queux, cook. At No. 5 we see remains of hôtel Séguier.
Rue Séguier was a thoroughfare, a country road in Childebert’s time; in the fourteenth century it became a street with the name Pavée-St-André-des-Arts. Every house has some interesting feature. The famous Hostellerie St-François till the eighteenth century on the site of No. 3, was the starting-point of the coaches for Normandy and Brittany. At No. 6 we see traces of the hôtel de Nemours. The Frères Cordonniers de St-Crépin, founded in 1645 (Shoemakers’ Confraternity), had its quarters where we see the Nos. 9, 11, 13. J. de Ste-Beuve, the Jansenist, was born and in 1677 died at No. 17. At No. 18 we see all that is left of a fourteenth-century hôtel de Nevers on the site of an older hôtel. The burial-ground of the church St-André stretched along part of Rue Suger: the presbytery was on the site of No. 13. Every house in this narrow old street tells of past days. At No. 3 we find traces of the chapel of the Collège de Boissy, founded in 1360 by a Canon of Chartres for seven poor students. Another old-time college stood in Rue de l’Éperon and till 1907, an ancient house, a dependency of the church St-André-des-Arts. Rue Serpente, a winding road in its earliest days, a street about the year 1200, was the site of the celebrated hôtel Serpente, and of the firm of printers where Tallien was an employé. The very modern Rue Danton, with its emphatically up-to-date structure in re-enforced concrete, has swept away a host of ancient houses. The hôtel des Sociétés Savantes is on the site of the hôtel de Thou, l’hôtel des États-de-Blois in the time of Louis XV.
Rue Mignon, twelfth century, recalls yet another college founded in 1343 by a dignitary of Chartres of this name; ancient houses at Nos. 1 and 5.
The most interesting of these old streets is Rue Hautefeuille with its two turrets, one at No. 5, the ancient hôtel of the Abbots of Fécamp, fourteenth century, the other octagonal, at No. 21, on the corner of what was once part of the Collège Damville of the same date: there in Roman times stood the castle Altum Folium—Hautefeuille—of which remains were found in the fourteenth century. This old street was no doubt a road leading to the citadel.
