WITH THIS LEGEND:
Mil cinq cents ans quarante et neuf passez
Du déluge: Paris le noble roy
Dix-huitième: fonda en grand arroy
Ville et cité de Paris belle assez
Devant que Rome eust des gens amassez
Six cent cinquante et huit ans comme croy.
TRANSLATION.
One thousand five hundred and forty-nine years after the Deluge, the noble King Paris, the eighteenth of his name, founded with great pomp the fine town and city of Paris, anterior to the foundation of Rome, which took place, as I think, 658 (?) years before Jesus Christ.
PLAN OF PARIS IN THE FIFTEENTH CENTURY.
Beauvais Tapestry (Communicated by M. Achille Jubinal.)
Paris,” informs us that in the following reign it reached its highest point of prosperity. In 1594, Dubourg made in these workshops, from the designs of Lerembert, the beautiful tapestries which, to a date very near our own, decorated the Church of Saint-Merry. Henry IV., says Sauval, hearing this work much spoken of, desired to see it, and was so pleased therewith that he resolved to restore the manufactories in Paris, “which the disorder of preceding reigns had abolished.” He therefore established Laurent, a celebrated tapestry-worker, in the maison professe of the Jesuits, which had remained closed since the trial of Jean Chastel. He allowed one crown a day, and one hundred francs a year, as wages to this skilful artist; his apprentices receiving ten sous a day, and his fellow-workmen twenty-five, thirty, and even forty sous, according to their skill. At a later period Dubourg and Laurent, who had entered into partnership, were both installed in the galleries of the Louvre. Henry IV., following the example of Francis I., brought from Italy skilled workers in gold and in silk. These he lodged in the Hôtel de la Maque, Rue de la Tisseranderie: the special works they made were hangings in fine cloth of gold and silver (frisé).