Philip Augustus, judging that Paris was not sufficiently protected by its walls, caused a tower to be built outside them, on the site of a Louveterie, or wolf-hunting establishment, from which it received the name of the Louvre. It served at once for a royal residence, a fortress, and a state-prison, and was completed, according to the original plan, in 1204. It was under this monarch that the streets of Paris were first paved. One day, while standing at a window of his palace in the city, the mud or filth in the street, shaken by some vehicles which were passing, exhaled an unbearable stench, which invaded the royal nostrils. It was then that Philip conceived the project of paving the streets. The work was done at the expense of the town, the pavement consisting of rough flagstones, about three feet and a half square, and six inches in thickness.
It was in this reign, in 1182, that the legate of the holy see consecrated the cathedral of Notre Dame, begun in 1163 by Maurice de Sully, Bishop of Paris. This immense edifice, however, was not finished till the reign of Charles VII. in the fifteenth century. The original flooring of Philip Augustus was lately found at eight or nine feet below the surface; and the thirteen steps which in his time, it is said, led to the entrance have disappeared. It was under Philip that the municipality of Paris received its first developments, and assumed a regular form. Besides the provost, who, as officer of the king, presided over the courts of justice, there was the syndic, nominated by the community of merchants, whose duty it was to protect the commercial interests of the town. He was afterward called the provost of the merchants, and was assisted by echevins, who formed his council. Under Philip, this officer acquired many new rights. The police, the streets, the care of public edifices, the administration of the lands belonging to the town, passed from the provost of Paris to this functionary.
Philip was also the patron of learning. He instituted schools in the Rue du Fouarre. Fouarre, or foare, from which is derived the existing fourrage, (forage,) is an old French word signifying straw. The scholars in those simple ages sat upon bundles of straw during the lectures, and as this custom naturally resulted in the frequent appearance of that material in the neighborhood of the schools, the street received its title from it. During the middle ages, no traffic was permitted in this street, in order to obviate any disturbance to the students.
Philip the Fair founded the parliament of Paris. It held its sessions in the king's palace, (Palais de Justice,) which, in the middle of the fifteenth century, was entirely abandoned to it. In this palace was the vast hall which served for receiving the homage of vassals, giving audience to ambassadors, public festivities, and other occasions of national interest, at one of the extremities of which was an enormous marble table, round which sovereigns alone were permitted to sit; and upon which, at certain times of the year, the society of clercs de la basoche (lawyers' clerks) gave dramatic entertainments of a farcical character.
In the fourteenth century, as now, Paris was celebrated as the seat of fashion in dress, though those dazzling magasins de nouveautés which we now admire there did not then exist. Wearing apparel, as well as other merchandise, was generally sold by criers in the streets. "They do not cease to bray from morning till night," writes Guillaume de Villeneuve. Venders of all classes swelled the discordant concert. To cry goods for sale was the daily special occupation; among others, of the three hundred blind men supported by the king, St. Louis. These unfortunates, it seems, were in the habit of performing their duties without guidance, and the consequence was that they frequently came in collision, and gave each other severe contusions.
The first stone of the famous Bastille was laid by the provost of Paris, in the reign of Charles V., 1369. That formidable edifice was built for the purpose of protecting the king, who had seen his authority braved by the Parisians while residing in his palace in the city, which on that account he quitted. He frequently dwelt in the Louvre, of which the Bastille was a pendant, and of which M. Vitet gives the following picturesque description as it was in the fourteenth century:
"The king caused to be raised outside the moats a number of buildings, useful and ornamental, of a middling height, forming what were then called basses-cours, and united to the chateau by gardens of considerable extent. One cannot imagine all the various objects that were heaped together in these dependencies and gardens. Besides lodgings for the officers of the crown, there were a menagerie of lions and panthers, bird-rooms, aviaries for the king's parrots, fish-ponds, basins, labyrinths, tunnels, trellises, leafy pavilions—the favorite decoration! of gardens in the middle ages. These parterres, cut in symmetrical compartments, and thrown in the midst of buildings varying in form and elevation; that chaos of towers and turrets—the former rising heavily from the moats, the latter as if suspended from the walls; that pell-mell of pointed roofs, here covered with lead, there with varnished tiles, some crested with heavy vanes, some with tufts of various colors—all this has no resemblance to a modern palace; but that disorder, these contrasts, which seem to us only barbarously picturesque, appealed quite differently to the imagination in those days, and were not without their grandeur and majesty. These were the bright days of the feudal Louvre, when it was living, peopled, and well cared for."
The space of ground which, until lately, formed the Marché des Innocents, was, in the middle ages, the principal cemetery of Paris. It was surrounded by a sort of vaulted gallery, which was reserved for the corpses of distinguished persons and for dress-makers' shops. Here, in the year 1424, the English, who were then masters of Paris, gave a grand fete of rejoicing for the battle of Verneuil, and indulged in a frightful "dance of the dead" over the level tombstones. In the middle of the cemetery rose an obelisk, surmounted by a lamp, which alone feebly illumined at night the field of the dead, and animated its solitude. But at sunrise all was changed—daylight brought back with it noise, luxury, and pleasure.
Victor Hugo, in the chapter of his romance, Notre Dame de Paris, entitled Paris à vol d'oiseau, (book iii. chapter ii.,) gives a vivid description of the town as it was in the fifteenth century. Paris, according to him, was at that time divided into three distinct parts—the city, the university, and the town. The city, occupying the island, was the oldest and smallest, and was the mother of the other two. "It stood between these," he says, "like a little, old woman between two tall, handsome daughters." The university was on the left bank of the Seine, stretching between points which at present correspond with the Halles aux Vins and La Monnaie. The town, the largest of the three divisions, was on the right side of the river. Each of the divisions formed a town, depending for its completeness upon the others. The city had churches; the town, palaces; the university, colleges.