We are now on Mont St. Genevieve, crowned by the Panthéon, below which, at No. 14 Rue Soufflot, an inscription marks the site of the Dominican monastery, where Albertus Magnus and St. Thomas Aquinas taught. To the north is the extensive library of St. Genevieve, on the site of the Collége Montaigue. Behind are the church of St. Etienne du Mont the burial-place of Racine and Pascal, with its beautiful jubé, or choir screen, and the Lycée Henri IV., enclosing the tower of Clovis, all that remains of the fine old abbey church of St. Genevieve. Hard by is the Rue Descartes, where stood the college of Navarre, which was demolished to give place to the Ecole Polytechnique. Farther south, the Rue de Navarre leads to the ruins of the great Roman amphitheatre.
West of the Boulevard St. Michel are the fine modern buildings of the Ecole de Médecine, which, from 1369 to the times of Louis XV., was situated further eastwards in the Rue de la Bûcherie, where (No. 13) some remains of the old hall of the Faculty may yet be seen. It was here that an anatomical and surgical theatre was built in 1617. The old Franciscan refectory (No. 15 Rue de l’Ecole de Médecine) is all that remains of the great monastery of the Cordeliers. Here the body of Marat was laid on an altar, after his assassination by Charlotte Corday in a house on whose site his statue stands. The refectory is now used as a pathological museum for medical students. The famous revolutionary club of the Cordeliers, where the gentler rhetoric of Camille Desmoulins vied with the thunderous declamation of Danton to stir Republican fervour, met in the Hall of Theology. At No. 5 are some remains of the school of surgery, or Guild of St. Cosimo and St. Damian, founded by St. Louis; adjacent stood the church of St. Cosimo (St. Cosme), famous for the fiery zeal of its curé during the times of the League.
The surgeons were by their charter compelled to give professional assistance to the poor every Monday, and in 1561 the curé and churchwardens of St. Cosme obtained a papal bull authorising them to erect in their church a suitable consulting hall for the accommodation of poor patients. In 1694 the surgeons built an anatomical theatre of their own at St. Cosme, which was enlarged in 1710. The buildings are now used as a school of decorative art. The magnificent Franciscan church, where many a queen of France lay buried, stood on the site of the present Place de l’Ecole de Médecine.
South of these is the Luxembourg Palace, whose charming Renaissance gardens, unhappily, owing to the erection of the Observatory in 1672, reduced by more than one-third of their former extent, are the delight of the Parisians of the south bank of the Seine. The old Orangery, restored and enlarged, is used as a public museum of contemporary French art, chiefly painting and sculpture. Here are exhibited the works of modern artists which have been deemed worthy of acquisition by the State. They display great talent and technical skill, but the visitor will leave, impressed by few works of great distinction. The English traveller will, however, be envious of a collection whose catholicity embraces examples of the work of two great modern masters, Londoners by option—Legros and Whistler. Any impression of modern French painting that may be left on the mind of the visitor by an inspection of the examples hung in the Luxembourg should however be supplemented and corrected by a visit to the decorative works in the great public edifices, such as the Hôtel de Ville, the Sorbonne, the Panthéon, and the churches of Paris.
North of the Museum loom the massive gloomy towers of the church of St. Sulpice, which contains, among much mediocre painting, a chapel to the right of the entrance adorned by some of Delacroix’s finest work. Still further northward is the old abbey church of St. Germain des Prés. But before entering we may cross the Rue de Rennes and visit (No. 50) the picturesque Cour du Dragon, so-called from the eighteenth-century figure of the dragon over the portal. At the end of this curious courtyard, paved as old Paris was paved, with the gutter in the centre of the street, will be seen two interesting old towers enclosing stairways.