It runs from the Quai de l’Hôtel de Ville,—once the unsavoury Quai de la Grève,—toward Les Halles; and throughout its length, which is not very great, it has that crazy, tumble-down appearance which comes, sooner or later, to most narrow thoroughfares of mediæval times.
It is not so very picturesque nor so very tumble-down, it is simply wobbly. It is not, nor ever was, a pretentious thoroughfare, and, in short, is distinctly commonplace; but there is a little house, on the right-hand side, near the river, which will be famous as long as it stands, as the intimate scene of much of the minor action of “Marguerite de Valois,” “Chicot the Jester,” and others of the series.
HÔTEL DES MOUSQUETAIRES, RUE D’ARBRE SEC
This maison is rather better off than most of its neighbours, with its white-fronted lower stories, its little balcony over the Crémerie, which now occupies the ground-floor, and its escutcheon—a blazing sun—midway in its façade.
Moreover it is still a lodging-house,—an humble hotel if you like,—at any rate something more than a mere house which offers “logement à pied.” Indeed its enterprising proprietor has erected a staring blue and white enamel sign which advertises his house:
HÔTEL
DES MOUSQUETAIRES
There is, perhaps, no harm in all this, as it would seem beyond all question to have some justification for its name, and it is above all something more tangible than the sites of many homes and haunts which may to-day be occupied with a modern magasin, à tous génres, or a great tourist caravanserai.
This house bears the name of “Hôtel des Mousquetaires,” as if it were really a lineal descendant of the “Hôtel de la Belle Etoile,” of which Dumas writes.
Probably it is not the same, and if it is, there is, likely enough, no significance between its present name and its former glory save that of perspicacity on the part of the present patron.