CHAPTER XXIX

ANCIENT STREETS OF THE FAUBOURG SAINT-GERMAIN The extensive district on the left bank of the Seine, through which was cut in modern times the wide boulevard St-Germain, was in its remotest days the Villa Sancti Germani, with its “_prés-aux-clercs_” a rural expanse surrounding the abbey and quite distinct from the city of Paris, without its bounds. The inhabitants of that privileged district were exempt from Paris “rates and taxes,” to use our latter-day expression, and enjoyed other legal immunities. They were subject only to the authority of the abbey administration and were actively employed in agricultural and other rustic occupations for the abbey benefit. The territory was a region of thatched-roofed dwellings, barns and granaries. When at length certain _grands seigneurs_ chose the district for the erection of country mansions, these newly built houses were soon forcibly abandoned, many of them destroyed, in the course of the Hundred Years’ War. A century or more later more mansions were built and the bourg St-Germain grew into the aristocratic quarter it finally became after the erection of the Tuileries, Catherine de’ Medeci’s new palace, in the middle of the sixteenth century. The venerable old Rue du Bac was made on the left bank of the Seine in a straight line with the ford (_bac_) across the river in the year 1550, for the transport of materials needed in the construction of the palace. The rough road along which the carters came with their loads, stone from the southern quarries, etc., grew into a fashionable street in the early years of the century following, when, after due authorization of the abbé of St-Germain-des-Prés, fine new _hôtels_ were built in every direction across the Prè-aux-Clercs, to be within easy distance of the Tuileries and the Court. Thus was created, in the first years of the eighteenth century, the patrician Faubourg St-Germain. The old houses in Rue du Bac which were nearest the river were burnt by the Communards in 1871, when the Tuileries itself was destroyed. The headquarters of the Mousquetaires Gris was once on the site of the houses Nos. 18-17. Many seventeenth- and eighteenth-century houses still stand. At No. 37 we find an old and interesting court. No. 46, hôtel Bernard, was successively inhabited by men of note, much of its ancient interior decoration has been removed. No. 94 belonged till recently to the Frères Chrétiens. No. 85 was once the royal monastery known as les Récollettes, subsequently in turn a theatre, a dancing saloon, a concert hall. At No. 98 Pichegru is said to have passed his first night in Paris. Here the Chouans held their secret meetings and Cadoudal lay in hiding. We see a fine door, balcony and staircase at No. 97. No. 101 dates from the time of Louis XIV. Nos. 120-118, hôtel de Clermont-Tonnerre; Chateaubriand died here in 1848. No. 128 is the Séminaire des Missions Étrangères, founded 1663 by Bernard de Ste-Thérèse, bishop of Babylone. No. 136 hôtel de Crouseilhes. No. 140 began as a _maladrerie_, was later the abode of the King’s falconer, and was given in 1813 to the Order of St-Vincent-de-Paul. Mme Legras, St-Vincent-de-Paul’s ardent fellow-worker, was buried in the chapel. The great shops of the Bon Marché stretch where private mansions stood of yore. Rue de Lille, formerly Rue de Bourbon, has many ancient houses. We see in the wall of No. 14 an old sundial with inscriptions in Latin. At No. 26 we find vestiges of a chapel founded by Anne d’Autriche. No. 67, built in 1706 for President Duret, was annexed later to the _hôtel_ of prince Monaco-Valentinois. No. 79, hôtel de Launion, 1758, was the house of Charlotte Walpole, who became Mrs. Atkins, the devoted friend of the Bourbons, and spent a fortune in her efforts to save the Dauphin. She died here in 1836. No. 64, built in 1786 for the prince de Salm-Kyrburg, was gained in a lottery by a wig-maker’s assistant, in the first days of the First Empire, an adventurer who bought the pretty palace of Bagatelle beyond Paris, was arrested for forgery, then disappeared. Used as a club, then, in 1804, as the palace of the Légion d’Honneur, it was burnt by the Communards in 1871, rebuilt at the cost of the _légionnaires_ in 1878. No. 78, built by Boffrand, was the home of Eugène de Beauharnais; we see there the bedroom of Queen Hortense. German Embassy before the war. Rue de Verneuil is another seventeenth-century street built across the Pré-aux-Clercs. Nos. 13-15 was first a famous eighteenth-century riding-school, then the Académie Royale Dugier; later, till 1865, Mairie of the arrondissement. The inn at No. 24 was the meeting-place of royalists in the time of the Empire. Rue de Beaume has several interesting _hôtels_, their old-time features well preserved. In the seventeenth century Carnot’s ancestors lived between the Nos. 17-25. At No. 10 we see remains of the headquarters of the Mousquetaires Gris, which extended across the meeting-point of the four streets: Beaume, Verneuil, Bac, Lille. No. 2 was l’hôtel Mailly-Nesle. Rue des Saints-Pères marks the boundary-line between arrondissements VI and VII, an old-world street of historic associations. It began at the close of the thirteenth century as Rue aux Vaches; cows passed there in those days to and from the farmyards of the abbey St-Germain-des-Prés. In the sixteenth century it was known, like Rue de Sèvres into which it runs, as Rue de la Maladrerie, to become Rue des Jacobins Réformés, finally Rue St-Pierre from the chapel built there, a name corrupted to Saints-Pères. No. 2 l’hôtel de Tessé. No. 6 (1652) once the stables of Marie-Thérèse de Savoie. No. 28 l’hôtel de Fleury (1768). The court of No. 30 covers the site of an old Protestant graveyard. A few old houses remain in Rue Perronet opening at No. 32, where once an abbey windmill worked. No. 39 Hôpital de la Charité, an Order founded by Marie de’ Medici in 1602, its principal entrance Rue Jacob. Dislodged from their original quarters in Rue de la Petite-Seine, where Rue Bonaparte now runs, by Queen Margot, who wanted the site for the new palace she built for herself on quitting l’hôtel de Sens, the nuns settled here about the year 1608. At No. 40 we see medallions over the door, one of Charlotte Corday, the other not, as sometimes said, that of Marat but a Moor’s head. In the court we see other medallions and mouldings made chiefly from the sculptures on the tomb of François I at St-Denis. The hôtel de la Force, where dwelt Saint-Simon, once stood close here. That and other ancient _hôtels_ were razed to make way for the boulevard St-Germain. No. 49, the chapel of the “frères de la Charité” on the site of the ancient chapel St-Pierre of which the crypt still remains, has been the medical Academy since 1881. The square adjoining it is an old Protestant burial-ground. Nos. 50-52 are ancient. No. 54 is the French Protestant library, Cuvier and Guizot were among its presidents. No. 56 was built in 1640 for la Maréchale de la Meilleraie. At No. 63 Châteaubriand lived from 1811 to 1814.