CHAPTER XXXVI

ON THE SLOPES OF THE _BUTTE_ The Rue du Faubourg Montmartre is one of the most ancient of Paris roadways, for it led, from the earliest days of French history, to the hill-top where St-Denis and his two companions had been put to death. Only once has the ancient name been changed--at the Revolution, when it was for a time Faubourg Marat. We see here a few old-time houses. The bathing establishment at No. 4 was a private _hôtel_ in the days of Louis XV. Scribe lived at No. 7. The ancient cemetery _chapelle_, St-Jean-Porte-Latine, stood from 1780-1836 on the site of No. 60. Rue des Martyrs, named in memory of the Christian missionaries who passed there to their death, so called in its whole length only since 1868, has ever been the habitation of artists. We see few interesting vestiges. From 1872 it has been a market street. Costermongers’ carts line it from end to end several days a week. The restaurant de la Biche at No. 37 claims to date from 1662. The once-famous restaurant du Faisan Doré was at No. 7. The short streets opening out of this long one date for the most part from the early years of the nineteenth century and form, with the longer ones of the district, the Paris artists’ quarter. Rue de la Tour d’Auvergne records the name of an abbess of Montmartre. Victor Hugo lived at No. 41 at the time of the _coup d’état_, fled thence to exile in England. The school at No. 31 is on the site of gardens once hired for the children of the duc d’Orléans, the pupils of Mme de Genlis, to play in, then owned by Alphonse Karr. We see at No. 14 a charming statue “Le joueur de flute.” Rue Rochechouart records the name of another abbess. At No. 7, now a printing house, abbé Loyson gave his lectures. Rue Cadet, formerly Rue de la Voirie, records the name of a family of gardeners, owners of the Clos Cadet, from the time of Charles IX. Nos. 9, 16, 24 are eighteenth-century structures. Rue Richer was known in the earlier years of the eighteenth century as Rue de l’Égout. Augustin Thierry lived here for two years (1831-33). No. 18 was the office of the modern revolutionary paper _La Lanterne_. Marshal Ney lived at the _hôtel_ numbered 13. The Folies Bergères at No. 32 was built in 1865 on the site of the _hôtel_ of comte Talleyrand-Périgord. In Rue Saulnier, recording the name of another famous family of gardeners, we see at No. 21 the house once inhabited by Rouget de Lisle, composer of the “Marseillaise.” Rue Bergère was in seventeenth-century days an _impasse_. Casimir Delavigne lived at No. 5. Scribe in his youth at No. 7, in later life at a _hôtel_ on the site of No. 20, which was in eighteenth-century days the home of M. d’Étiolles, the husband of La Pompadour. The Comptoir d’Escompte at No. 14 was built in 1848, on the site of several old _hôtels_, notably hôtel St-Georges, the home of the marquis de Mirabeau, father of the orator. Rue du Faubourg Poissonière, its odd numbers in the 9th its even ones in the 10th arrondissement, shows us many interesting old houses and we find quaint old streets leading out of it. It dates as a thoroughfare from the middle of the seventeenth century, named then Chaussée de la Nouvelle France. Later it was Rue Ste-Anne, from an ancient chapel in the vicinity, yielding finally in the matter of name to the all-important fish-market to which it led--the poissonnerie des Halles. In the court at No. 2 we find a Pavillon Louis XVI. The crimson walls of the _Matin_ office was in past days the private _hôtel_ where colonel de la Bedoyère was arrested (1815). We see interesting old houses at Nos. 9-13. No. 15, in old days hôtel des Menus Plaisirs du Roi, was with two adjoining houses taken at the end of the eighteenth century for the Conservatoire de Musique, an institution founded (1784) by the marquis de Breteuil, as the École Royale de Chant et de Déclamation, with the special aim of training _artistes_ for the court theatre. Closed at the Revolution, it was reopened in calmer days and, under the direction of Cherubini, became world-famed. Ambroise Thomas died there in 1895. In 1911 the Conservatoire was moved away to modern quarters in Rue de Madrid and the old building razed. The balcony on the garden side at No. 19, an eighteenth-century house with many interesting vestiges, is formed of a fifteenth-century gravestone. Cherubini lived at No. 25. The church St-Eugène which we see in Rue Cecile, its interior entirely of cast iron, was so named by Napoléon III’s express wish as a souvenir of his wedding. The fine _hôtel_ at No. 30 was the home of Marshal Ney. Nos. 32, 42, 42 _bis_, 52 and 56 where Corot died in 1875, the little vaulted Rue Ambroise-Thomas, opening at No. 57, the fine house at No. 58, and Nos. 65 and 80, all show us characteristic old-time features. At No. 82 we see an infantry barracks, once known as la Nouvelle France, a Caserne des Gardes Françaises. Its canteen is said to be the old bedroom of “sergeant Bernadotte,” destined to become King of Sweden. Here Hoche, too, was sergeant. The bathing establishment of Rue de Montholon, opening out of the faubourg at No. 89, was the home of Méhul, author of _le Chant du Départ_; he died here in 1817. The street records the family name of the General who went with Napoléon to St. Helena. Another abbess of Montmartre is memorized by Rue Bellefond, a seventeenth-century street opening at No. 107. The first Paris gasworks was set up on the site of No. 129. At No. 138 we see a wooden house, in Gothic style, beautifully made, owned and lived in by a carpenter who plies his trade there. Avenue Trudaine is modern (1821), named in memory of a Prévôt des Marchands of the seventeenth and early years of the eighteenth century. The Collège Rollin, at No. 12, is on the site of the ancient Montmartre slaughterhouses. The painter Alfred Stevens died at No. 17 in 1906.