CHAPTER XLIV

TOWARDS THE WESTERN BOUNDARY Rue de Passy, the ancient Grande Rue, the village High Street before the district was included within the Paris boundary-line, dates from fifteenth-century days, when it was a fief, owned by Jeanne de Paillard, known as La Dame de Passy; it reverted to the Crown under Louis XI, and was bestowed on successive nobles. At the _carrefour_--the cross roads--where the tramcars now stop for Rue de la Tour, stood the seignorial gallows. The seignorial habitation, a château with extensive grounds, was built in 1678; in 1826 the whole domain was sold and cut up. The district was known far and wide in past days on account of its mineral springs. Here and there along the street we see an ancient house still standing. The narrow _impasse_ at No. 24 is ancient. The nineteenth-century poet Gustave Nadaud died at No. 63 in 1893. No. 84, now razed, showed, until a few years ago, an interesting Louis XV façade in the courtyard, once a dependency of the Château de la Muette. Rue de la Pompe, named from the pump which supplied the Château de la Muette with water, a country road in the eighteenth century, shows few vestiges of the past. No. 53 is part of an old Carmelite convent. Chaussée de la Muette is a nineteenth-century prolongation of Rue de Passy. The château from which it takes its name was originally a hunting-lodge, stags and birds were carefully enclosed here during the time of moulting (_la mue_, hence the name) in the days of Charles IX. Margaret de Valois, the notorious Reine Margot, was its first regular inhabitant. She gave the mansion to King Louis XIII when he came of age in 1615. It was rebuilt by the Regent in 1716 and became the favourite abode of his daughter the duchesse de Berri. There she died three years later. It was the home of Louis XV during his minority. Mme de Pompadour lived there and had the doors beautifully painted. It was again rebuilt in 1764, Marie-Antoinette and the Dauphin, soon to be Louis XVI, spent the first months of their married life there. It was from the Park de la Muette that the first balloon was sent up in 1783. The property was cut up in 1791, and in 1820 bought by Sebastien Érard of pianoforte fame, and once more rebuilt. Thus it came by the spindle-side to the comte de Franqueville; a big slice has been cut off in recent years for the making of a new street named after its present owner.[G] [Illustration: RUE DES EAUX, PASSY] Avenue du Ranelagh records the existence, in the latter years of the eighteenth century, of the fashionable dancing hall and grounds opened here in imitation of the Rotonde built in London by Lord Ranelagh. Marie-Antoinette was among the great ladies who danced there. The hall was closed at the Revolution but was reopened and again the vogue under the Directoire and until 1830, when it became a public dancing saloon. It was demolished in 1858, the lawns were left to form a promenade. The statue of La Fontaine dates from 1891. Rue du Ranelagh is wholly modern. Rue Raynouard crossing it dates from the seventeenth century, when it was the Grande Rue, later the Haute Rue of the quarter, to become later still Rue Basse. Florian, the charming fable-writer, was wont to stay at No. 75. We see a fine old _hôtel_ at No. 69, and an old-world street, Rue Guillou, close by. Rue des Vignes opening at No. 72 reminds us of the vineyards once on these sunny slopes. No. 66 was the site of the hôtel Valentinois, where Franklin lived for several years and where he put up the first lightning conductor in France. No. 51 is ancient, and No. 47 is known as la Maison de Balzac. In a pavilion in the garden sloping to the Seine he lived from 1842-48, lived and wrote, wrote incessantly there as elsewhere and always. There, carefully preserved, may be seen the chair he sat in, the table he wrote at, the pen he used, and a hundred other personal relics. Lectures about the great novelist and subjects connected with his life and work are given there from time to time. We see ancient houses on to the end of this quaint street. Marie-Antoinette stayed from time to time at No. 42 to be within easy reach of her confessor, the Vicar of Passy; so tradition says. The second story of this house sheltered Béranger, 1833-35. The man of letters who gave his name to the street died at No. 36, in 1836. At No. 21, the warrior, la Tour d’Auvergne, passed the years 1776-1800. Jean Jacques Rousseau stayed with friends here and wrote his “Devin du Village.” Mineral waters, such as made the springs of Passy renowned in bygone days, still bubble up in this fine park. The modern erection, No. 19, is on the site of the ancient hôtel Lauzun, where the duc de Saint-Simon used to stay, and where the first steps were taken for the marriage of Napoléon III. At No. 11 we turn for an instant into the quaint old Rue des Eaux, strikingly reminiscent of a past age, when the tonifying waters of Passy were drunk in a pavilion on the site of No.