CHAPTER XV

IN THE VICINITY OF TWO ANCIENT CHURCHES ARRONDISSEMENT V. PANTHÉON. RIVE GAUCHE (LEFT BANK) Crossing the Seine by the Pont St-Michel we reach Place St-Michel, of which we will speak in another chapter, as it lies chiefly in arrondissement VI. Turning to the east, we come upon two of the oldest and most interesting of Paris churches and a very network of ancient streets, sordid enough some of them, but emphatically characteristic. Rue de la Huchette dates from the twelfth century; there in olden days two very opposite classes plied their trade:--the _rotisseurs_--turnspits, and the diamond cutters. The old street is still of some renown in the district for good cooking in the few restaurants of a humble order that remain. The erewhile Bouillon de la Huchette is now a _bal_. Once upon a time Ambassadors dined at l’hôtellerie de l’Ange in this old street. And the name “Le Petit Caporal” tells its own tale. There Buonaparte, friendless and penniless, lodged in the street’s decadent days. Rue Zacharie, dark and narrow between its tall old houses, dates back to the twelfth or early thirteenth century. Rue du Chat qui Pêche, less ancient (sixteenth century), is a mere pathway between high walls. From Rue Zacharie we turn into Rue St-Séverin, one of the most ancient of ancient streets. Many traces of past ages still remain despite the demolition of old houses around the beautiful old church we see before us, and subterranean passages run beneath the soil. At No. 26 and again at No. 4 we see the name of the street, the word Saint obliterated by the Revolutionists. The church porch gives on Rue de Prêtres-St-Séverin--thirteenth century. It was brought here from the thirteenth-century church St-Pierre-aux-Bœufs, razed in 1837. Till then the entrance had been the old door, Rue St-Séverin, where we see still the words, half effaced: “Bonne gens, qui par cy passées, priez Dieu pour les trepassés,” and the figures of two lions, once on the church steps, where the Clergy of the parish were wont of yore to administer justice: hence the phrase “Datum inter leones.” The church was built in the twelfth century, on the site of a chapel erected in the days of Childebert, over the tomb of Séverin, the hermit. Thrice restored, partially rebuilt, the beautiful edifice shows Gothic architecture in its three stages: primitive: porch, side door, three bays; rayonnant: the tower and part of the nave and side aisle; flamboyant: chancel and the splendid apse. Glorious stained glass, beautiful frescoes--modern, the work of Flandrin, fine statues surround us here. A striking feature is the host of votive offerings, some a mere slab a few inches in size with the simple word “Merci” and a date. Many refer to the successful passing of examinations, for we are in the vicinity of the University. The presbytery and its garden cover what was once the graveyard. Some of the old _charniers_ still remain. [Illustration: RUE ST-SÉVERIN] [Illustration: ÉGLISE ST-SÉVERIN] Rue de la Parcheminerie (thirteenth century), in part demolished recently, in its early days Rue des Escrivains, was for long the exclusive habitation of whoever had to do with the making and selling of books. The “hôtel des Pères Tranquilles” once there has gone. Two old houses, Nos. 6 and 7, were in the thirteenth-century dependencies of Norwich Cathedral for English student-monks. In Rue Boutebrie, one side entirely rebuilt of late, dwelt the illuminators of sixteenth-century scrolls and books. We see a characteristic ancient gable at No. 6. This house and No. 8 have ancient staircases. Crossing Rue St-Jacques we turn into Rue St-Julien-le-Pauvre, “le Vieux Chemin” of past times. Through the old arched doorway we see there, surmounted by a figure of Justice, was the abode of a notable eighteenth-century Governor of the Petit-Châtelet, whose duty was that of hearing both sides in student quarrels and pronouncing judgment. The church we see was the University church of the twelfth and several succeeding centuries. University meetings were held there and many a town and gown riot, or a merely gown riot, took place within its walls. The slab above the old door tells of its cession to the administrators of the hôtel-Dieu in 1655. Some of its stones date from the ninth or, maybe, from an even earlier century; for the church before us was a rebuilding in the twelfth of one erected in the ninth century to replace the hostel and chapel built there in the sixth century and overthrown by the Normans--the hostel where Gregory of Tours had made a stay. The ancient Gothic portal and two bays falling to decay were lopped off in 1560. The well we see in the courtyard was once within the church walls. Another well of miracle-working fame, on the north side, had a conduit to the altar. Passing through a door near the vestry we find ourselves on the site of the ancient _annexe_ of the hôtel-Dieu, razed a few years ago, and see on one side the chevet of the church with its quaint belfry and flight of steps on the roof, on the other a high, strong, moss-grown wall said to be a remnant of the boundary wall of Philippe-Auguste. In 1802 the church was given to the Greek Catholics of Paris--Melchites. The _iconostase_, therefore, very beautiful, is an important feature. We see some very ancient statues, and a more modern one of Montyon, founder of the Virtue-prizes bestowed annually by the Académie Française. [Illustration: HÔTEL LOUIS XV, RUE DE LA PARCHEMINERIE] In Rue Galande, what remains of it, we see several interesting old houses, and on the door of No. 42 a bas-relief showing St. Julien in a ship. Rue du Fouarre, one side gone save for a single house, once Rue des Escholiers, recalls the decree of Pope Urban V that students of the Schools must hear lectures humbly sitting on the ground on bundles of straw which they were bound themselves to provide. Benches were too luxurious for the students of those days. In this street of the “Écoles des Quatre Nations,” France, Normandie, Alsace, Picardie, Dante listened to the instruction of Brunetto Latini. No. 8 with its old door is on the site of the “École de Normandie.” The street close by, named in memory of the great Italian poet, is modern. In Rue Domat stood, till the nineteenth century, the walls of the suppressed convent de Cornouailles founded by a Breton in 1317. Rue des Anglais, the resort of English students from the time of Philippe-Auguste, was famous till recent days for the Cabaret du Père Lunette, about to be razed. The first Père Lunette went about his business wearing enormous spectacles. The second landlord of the inn, gaining possession of its founder’s “specs,” wore them as a badge, slung across his chest. Rue de l’hôtel Colbert has no reference to the statesman. In early times it was Rue des Rats. Rue des Trois-Portes recalls the thirteenth-century days when three houses only formed the street. No. 10, connected with No. 13 Rue de la Bûcherie, the log-selling street, shows us the ancient “Faculté de Médicine,” surrounded in past days by the garden, the first of the kind, where medical men and medical students cultivated the herbs necessary for their physic. The interesting old Gothic structure, more than once threatened with demolition, has been classed as an historical monument, under State care therefore, and reconstructed as the Maison des Étudiants. The students were very keen about the completion of their new house on its time-honoured site, and when the masons in course of reconstruction went on strike, the young men threw aside their books, donned a workman’s jacket, or failing that doffed their coats and rolled up their shirt-sleeves and set to work with all youth’s ardour as bricklayers. Their zeal was greater, however, than their technical knowledge or their physical fitness, and their work left much to be desired, as the French say. Then fortunately the strike ended. [Illustration: ST-JULIEN-LE-PAUVRE] [Illustration: BAS-RELIEF, RUE GALANDE] Place Maubert, named after the second vicar of Ste-Geneviève, M. Aubert, was the great meeting-place of students, and here Maître Albert, the distinguished Dominican professor, surnamed “le Grand,” his name recorded by a neighbouring street, gave his lectures in the open air. Executions also took place here. In Impasse Maubert dwelt Ste-Croix, the lover and accomplice of the poisoner Mme de Brinvilliers, and in Rue des Grand Degrés Voltaire in his youth worked in a lawyer’s office. The cellars of Rue Maître-Albert are said to have been prison cells; at No. 13 the negro page Zamor, whose denunciation led Mme Dubarry to the scaffold, died in misery in 1820. No. 16 was the meeting-place of the Communards in 1871. Rue de la Bièvre reminds us that the tributary of the Seine, now a turgid drain, closely covered, once joined the mother-river here. Tradition says Dante made his abode here while in Paris. Over the door of No. 12 we see a statue of St-Michel slaying the dragon. This was originally a college founded in his own house in 1348 by Guillaume de Chanac, bishop of Paris, for twelve poor scholars of the diocese of Limoges. In Rue des Bernardins we see the church St-Nicolas-du-Chardonnet, St-Nicolas of the Thistle-field, built in the seventeenth century upon the site of a thirteenth-century structure erected where till then thistles had run riot. It was designed by a parishioner of mark, the painter Lebrun, enriched by his paintings and those of other artists of note. The tomb of his mother is within its walls and a monument to his memory by Coysevox. Rue St-Victor recalls the abbey, once on the site where now we see the Halle-aux-Vins. There Maurice de Sulli, builder of Notre-Dame, died and was buried in 1196. Hither, to its famous school, came Abelard, St. Thomas à Becket, St. Bernard. It was razed to the ground in 1809. At Nos. 24-26 we saw till just recently the ancient seminary of St-Nicolas, closed since 1906, with its long rows of old-world windows, seventy-two panes on one story; the college buildings were at the corner of Rue Pontoise, a street opened in 1772 as a calf-market and named from the town noted for its excellent veal. And here we find at No. 19 vestiges of the ancient convent of the Bernardins. Rue de Poissy has more important remains of the convent and of its college, founded in 1245 by the English Abbé de Clairvaux, Stephen Lexington, aided by a brother of St. Louis. The grand old walls now serve as the Caserne des Pompiers--the Fire Station. Within we find beautiful old-time Gothic work, a fine staircase, arched naves, tall, slender pillars--the refectory of the monks of yore; and beneath it vaulted cellars with some seventy pillars and ancient bays.