Historic Paris by Jetta Sophia Wolff

at No. 27, built in or about 1712, for Nicolas de Bragelonne, Treasurer of France. Its chief point of interest is connected with Voltaire. Here he died in 1778; here his heart was kept till 1791. No. 25 was the home of Alfred de Musset. The ground between 25 and 15 was occupied from the days of Mazarin till 1791 by the convent of the Théatins. The short Rue de Beaume close here shows us many interesting old-time houses. No. 1 was the hôtel of the Marquis de Villette, who became a member of the Convention, and called his son Voltaire. At No. 3 were his stables. Boissy d’Anglas lived at No. 5, in 1793, and Chateaubriand stayed here in 1804. No. 17, dating from about 1670, was the house of the Carnot family. At No. 10 we see vestiges of a house belonging to the Mousquetaires Gris, for this was their headquarters. No. 2 was built for the Marquis de Mailly-Nesle. Nos. 11 to 9, along the _quai_, formed the habitation of Président de Perrault, secretary to the Grand Condé. The duchess of Portsmouth lived here in 1690, and here the great painter, Ingres, died in 1867. Quai Malaquais began as Quai de la Reine Marguerite, but was nicknamed forthwith Quai Mal-acquet (_Mal-acquis_) because the Queen, Henri IV’s light-lived, divorced wife, had taken the abbey grounds of the Petit Pré-aux-Clercs whereon to build her garden-surrounded mansion. At No. 1 the architect Visconti died in 1818. In 1820 Humboldt lived at No. 3. The statue of Voltaire by Caillé was set up opposite No. 5 in 1885. The house at No. 9 was built about 1624 on the ground _mal-acquis_ by Margaret de Valois. No. 11, École des Beaux-Arts, is on the site of the ancient hôtel de Brienne, Louis XIV’s Secretary of State. Joined later to the house next door it became the home of Mazarin, by and by of Fouché, and was made to communicate with the police offices at a little distance. Nos. 15 and 17, built by Mansart in 1640, restored a century later, after long habitation by persons of noted name, was taken over by the State, and in 1885 annexed to the Beaux-Arts. Quai de Conti records the name of the brother of the Grand Condé. Its most prominent building is the Institut de France, the Collège Mazarin, built in 1663-70, as the Collège des Quatre Nations Réunies. Its left pavilion covers the site of the ancient Tour de Nesle, washed by the Seine, which formed the boundary point of Philippe-Auguste’s wall and rampart. Mazarin’s will endowed the college for the benefit of sixty impecunious gentlemen’s sons of Alsace, France, Pignerol, Roussillon. The Revolutionists styled it “Collège de l’Unité,” then in 1793 suppressed it, and used the building for meetings of the Salut Public, later as an École Normale, then as a Palais des Arts; finally, after undergoing restoration, it became in 1805 the Institut de France, as we know it. The ancient chapel has been taken for the great meeting-hall, the hall of the grandes “Séances.” For long Mazarin’s tomb, now in the Louvre, was there. His body is said to be there still, deep down beneath the chapel pavement. The Bibliothèque Mazarine is in the part of the building covering the spot where the petit hôtel de Nesle stood of old. The greater part of the statesman’s valuable collection of books was brought here from his palace, now incorporated in the Bibliothèque Nationale, Rue de Richelieu, according to his will. It contains many precious ancient volumes and manuscripts. The house No. 15 was built by Louis XIV on the foundations of the ancient Tour de Nesle. No. 13, where we see the shop of the booksellers Pigoreau, was built by Mansard, in 1659, one of its walls resting upon a bit of the ancient wall of Philippe-Auguste. Here, on the third story, we may see the room, an attic then, as now, where young Buonaparte, a student at the École Militaire, used to spend his holidays, welcomed there by old friends of his family. The short Rue Guénégaud, memorizing the mansion once there, bordering at one part the walls of the Mint, shows us along the rest of its course, at No. 1, remains of a once famous marionnettes theatre; at No. 19 an old gabled house; in the court, No. 29, a tower of Philippe-Auguste’s wall; an ancient inscription at No. 35; a fine old door at No. 16, etc. The narrow old-world Rue de Nevers shows us none but ancient houses. This thirteenth-century street was formerly closed at both ends and known therefore as Rue des Deux-Portes. Beneath No. 13 of the little Rue de Nesle runs an ancient subterranean passage blocked in recent years. The old house at No. 5 of the quay was for long looked upon as the dwelling of Buonaparte after he left Brienne. At the recently razed No. 3 lived Marie-Antoinette’s jeweller, his shop surmounted by the sign “Le petit Dunkerque,” referring to articles of curiosity in the jewellery line, much in vogue in the year 1780. A little café at No. 1, also razed, was till lately the humble successor of the first Paris “Café des Anglais,” set up there in 1769, a gathering-place for British men of letters. [Illustration: QUAI DES GRANDS-AUGUSTINS] Quai des Grands-Augustins, the oldest of Paris quays, dates in part from the thirteenth century, and records the existence there of the monastery where in its heyday the great assemblies of the clergy were held, and the ecclesiastical archives kept from 1645 to 1792. The Salle des Archives was then given up to the making of _assignats_. In 1797 the convent was sold and razed to the ground. We see some traces of it at No. 55. The bookseller’s shop there was till recent years paved with gravestones from the convent chapel which stood on the site of No. 53. The restaurant Lapérouse at No. 51 was, in the seventeenth century, the hôtel of the comte de Bruillevert. The Académie bookseller, Didier-Perrin, is established in the ancient hôtel Feydeau et Montholon. No. 25 was built by François I. No. 23 opened on the vanished Rue de Hurepoix. No. 17 was part of the hôtel d’O, subsequently hôtel de Luynes. Quai St-Michel was known for a time in Napoléon’s day as Quai de la Gloriette. Its first stone was laid so far back as 1561, then no more stones added till 1767, an interim of two centuries. Another interruption deferred its completion to the year 1811. The two narrow sordid streets we see opening on to it, Rue Zacharie and Rue du Chat qui Pêche, date, the first from 1219, as in part Rue Sac-à-lie in part Rue des Trois-Chandeliers, from its earliest days a slum; the second, a mere alley, from 1540. Quai de Montebello began in 1554 as Quai des Bernardins from the vicinity of the convent--its walls still standing (_see_ p. 136). The quay bore several successive names till its entire reconstruction in early nineteenth-century years, when it was renamed in memory of Napoléon’s great General, Maréchal Lannes. Quai de la Tournelle was Quai St-Bernard in the fourteenth century. The Porte St-Bernard was close by. La Tournelle was a stronghold where prisoners were kept close until deported. On the wall of Nos. 57-55, now a distillery, we read the words: “Hôtel cy-devant de Nesmond.” It began as hôtel du Pain. Président de Nesmond, who owned it later, inscribed his name on its frontage, the first inscription of the kind known. The Pharmacie Centrale we see at No. 47 is the ancient convent of the Miramiones. The nuns were so named from Mme de Miramion who, left a widow at sixteen, founded this convent for the care of poor girls. The nuns had their own boat to convey the girls to services at Notre-Dame. In the chapel we find seventeenth-century decorations, and in the body of the building many interesting vestiges. On the walls at No. 37 we read the inscription, “Hôtel cy-devant du Président Rolland” (the anti-Jesuit). The old-time coaches for Fontainebleau had their bureau and starting-point at No. 21. No. 15 is the quaint and historic restaurant de la Tour d’Argent, which has existed since 1575 (closed during the war), famed for its excellent and characteristic _cuisine_ and its picturesque, old-time menu cards, with their strong spice of _couleur locale_. Quai d’Austerlitz is the old Quai de l’Hôpital. The boundary-line between Paris and what was before its incorporation the village of Austerlitz passed at No. 21. The famous hôtel des Haricots, the prison of the Garde Nationale, where many artists and men of letters of olden days served a period of punishment, often left their names written in couplets on its walls, was till the early years of last century on the site where now we see the busy departure platform of the Gare d’Orléans. Quai de la Gare, bordered by ancient houses, was till 1863 route Nationale.