How different is the present aspect of this once courtly square! Here noble gentlemen in dazzling armour jousted, while, from the windows of each of the thirty-five pavilions, gentle dames and demoiselles smiled gracious guerdon to their cavaliers. Around the bronze statue of Louis XIII., proudly erect on the noble horse cast by Daniello da Volterra, in the middle of the gardens, fine ladies were carried in their sedan-chairs and angry gallants fought out their quarrels. And now on the scene of these brilliant revels, peaceful inhabitants of the east of Paris sun themselves and children play. Bronze horse and royal rider went to the melting pot of the Revolution to be forged into the cannon that defeated and humbled the allied kings of Europe, and a feeble marble equestrian statue, erected under the Restoration, occupies its place. Henry also partly rebuilt the Hôtel Dieu, created new streets, and widened others.[123] New fountains and quays were built; the Porte du Temple was reopened, and the Porte des Tournelles constructed. Unhappily, some of the old wooden bridges remained, and on Sunday, 22nd December 1596, the Pont aux Meuniers (Miller’s Bridge), just below the Pont au Change, suddenly collapsed, with all its shops and houses, and sixty persons perished. They were not much regretted, for most of them had enriched themselves by the plunder of Huguenots, and during the troubles of the League. The bridge was rebuilt of wood, at the cost of the captain of the corps of archers, and as the houses were painted each with the figure of a bird, the new bridge was known as the Pont aux Oiseaux (Bridge of Birds). It spanned the river from the end of the Rue St. Denis and the arch of the Grand Châtelet to the Tour de l’Horloge of the Palais de Justice. In 1621, however, it and the Pont au Change were consumed by fire in a few hours and, in 1639, the two wooden bridges were replaced by a bridge of stone, the Pont au Change, which stood until rebuilt in 1858.
It was in Henry’s reign that the Penitents, a regularised order of reformed Franciscan Tertiaries, were established at Picpus, a small village south-east of the Porte St. Antoine, and the friars became known to the Parisians as the Picpuses. The buildings are now occupied by the nuns of the Sacré Cœur, whose church contains a much venerated statuette of the Virgin, which, in Henry’s reign, stood over the portal of the Capucin convent in the Rue St. Honoré. Readers of Les Misérables will remember that it was over the high walls of this convent that Jean Valjean escaped with Cosette from his pursuers. At the end of the garden lie buried in the cemetery of Picpus the victims of the Revolution who were guillotined on the Place du Trône Renversé (now du Trône).