Menage, in his "Origines de la Langue Françoise," 1684, gave a like account, but described the effigies of St. Fiacre as adorning the front of a house in Rue Saint Antoine.
Both writers appear to have been in error. A satiric Mazarinade dating 1652, and bearing for title the "Royal Supper of Pontoise," etc., has the following lines descriptive of the embarrassment of the worshipful supper-eaters when they wished to return home at a late hour to Paris:
"C'était pour avoir des Carrosses,
Ou l'on attelle Chevaux rosses,
Dont les cuirs tout rappetassés,
Vilains, crasseux, et mal passés,
Représentoient le simulacre,
De l'ancienne Voiture à Fiacre
Qui fut le premier du métier,
Qui louoit carosse au Quartier
De Monsieur de Saint Thomas à Louvre."
[Footnote 241]
[Footnote 241: It (the embarrassment) was to provide cabs
To which they yoke poor hack horses,
Whose leathers all shrunken,
Ugly, greasy, and badly dressed,
Represent the ghost
Of the old cab belonging to Fiacre,
Who was the first of the trade,
That hired out carriages at the Quarter
Of Monsieur St. Thomas of the Louvre.]
Fiacre may have prospered in his business, and unprincipled rivals have carried out his idea, and adopted the effigies of the saint after whom the poor cabman was called. Thus Sanval may have seen the pictured saint presiding over the useful articles (originally let out at three sous the drive) in Rue Saint Martin, and Menage may have seen a rival, Rue Saint Antoine. It is more likely that the plagiarists appropriated for their vehicles the name of the saint than that of the humble individual, the inventor of the system.
Saint Fiachra was of that noble band of Irish missionaries who spread themselves over the Continent soon after the island was converted. St. Virgil became patron of Saltzburg, St. Killian of Franconia, St. Gall of Switzerland, St. Columbanus of the Vosges and of Bobbio in Italy. St. Fiachra was gladly welcomed by the bishop of Meaux in the seventh century, and devoted his services to the care of an hospital. The cabriolet drivers and (if we remember aright) the market gardeners of Paris honor him as their patron.
Mysteries Of The Rue D'Arbre ?ec. [Illegible]
No visitor will fail to visit the church of St. Germain d'Auxerrois, the parish church, as it may be called, of the inmates of the Tuileries, and within a few stones' throw of that luxurious but not very comfortable residence. The possession of the most finely furnished apartments will not give much pleasure to the dweller who is uncertain whether he may not be ejected from them to-morrow. The triple portal of the church dates from the middle of the thirteenth century, and the low steeple from a much earlier period. Owing to the late demolitions, the exterior of the church can now be examined with more convenience and pleasure than of yore, and many a saunterer will be surprised to see, arranged along the frieze of a lateral chapel projecting into the Rue d'Arbre Sec, various portions of a carp, separated from one another by roses, (architectural, to wit,) here a head, there a body, and then (a rose intervening) a tail. As far as the information got from passers-by extends, he must remain in ignorance of the cause of the strange ornamentation, but he may learn it here at second-hand, our authority being the archaeologist M. Didron. An individual inhabitant of the adjoining street (perhaps a fish-monger) had got permission to add this chapel to the old edifice; and to connect his name (Tronçon, a piece cut away) with the building, he devised this ingenious plan.
Another pious and equally ingenious dweller in the same street, who dealt in poultry, did so well in business that she built a new house at the corner, and in front erected a pious monument. Her name being Anne, she got a sculptor to execute a group for her, namely, St. Anne, mother of the Blessed Virgin, teaching her daughter to read. Having thus secured her name from oblivion, she got her occupation transmitted to after-times by having various fowl sculptured in bas-relief on the plinth. Alas! how are casual visitors to know, when admiring the group, that it was executed at the expense of Anne the poulterer of the street of the withered tree; and who is aware of the circumstance from which the street itself got its name in old times?
In days when pilgrimages were in fashion, a certain house of entertainment in that street was much in favor with the really devout, as well as the wanderers who had returned in life from the Holy Land. These had brought home intelligence of a wonderful tree which had annually produced leaves and fruit in the vicinity of Hebron, from the days of Adam to that on which our Lord was crucified. [Footnote 242] On that day it withered, and, according to the assertion of the pilgrims, would remain sapless till the Holy City would be in the possession of a Christian power. Such a legend was calculated to make a deep impression on the customers of the auberge, for which an open-air artist was soon called on to execute the effigies of the famous dry tree for a sign. Afterward the inn communicated its name to the street.