Historic Paris by Jetta Sophia Wolff

THE NEIGHBOURHOOD OF THE BIBLIOTHÈQUE NATIONALE ARRONDISSEMENT II. (BOURSE) Rue des Petits-Champs marks the boundary between the arrondissements I and II--the odd numbers in arrondissement I, the even ones in arrondissement II. The street was opened in 1634. Many of its old houses still stand and show us, without and within, some interesting architectural features of past days. The hôtel Tubeuf, No. 8, destined with adjoining mansions to become the Bibliothèque Nationale, was, tradition tells us, staked at the gambling table and won by the statesman Mazarin. The Cardinal bought two adjoining _hôtels_ and surrounding land as far as the Rue Colbert and built thereon his own fine mansion, using the two _hôtels_ as wings. The first books placed there were those of his own library, a fine collection, taken at his death, according to the directions of his will, to the Collège des Quatre Nations, known to-day as the Institut Mazarin. The Cardinal’s vast mansion was divided among his heirs and in its different parts was put to various uses during following years till, in 1721, it was bought by the Crown. The King’s library was then taken there from Rue Vivienne, where it had been placed in 1666, and soon afterwards opened to the public. The greater part of the building has been reconstructed in modern times and enlarged. The blackened walls of a part of Mazarin’s mansion, that formed l’hôtel de Nivers, still stand at the corner of Rue Colbert. The chief entrance to the Library is in Rue de Richelieu. Engravings, medals, works of art of many descriptions connected with letters may be seen at what has been successively Bibliothèque Royale, Bibliothèque Impériale and is now Bibliothèque Nationale. The ceiling of the Galerie Mazarin is covered with splendid frescoes by Romanelli. The heart of Voltaire is said to be encased in the statue we see there. Madame de Récamier died at the Library in 1849; she had taken refuge there in the rooms of her niece, whose husband was one of the officials when the cholera broke out in l’Abbaye-aux-Bois. Opposite the Library, on the Rue Richelieu side, is the Square Louvois dating from 1839, on the site of two old _hôtels_ once there. There, in 1793, Citoyenne Montansier set up a theatre, known successively as Théâtre des Arts, Théâtre de la Loi and the Opéra. After the assassination of the duc de Berri in front of No. 3 Rue du Rameau (February 13, 1820) as he was about to re-enter the Opera-House, Louis XVIII intended to build there a _chapelle expiatoire_. The Revolution of 1830 put an end to that project. The big poplar-tree, seen until recent years overlooking Rue Rameau, was planted as a tree of Liberty in 1848. It suddenly died in 1912. The fountain is the work of Visconti and Klagman (1844). In Rue Chabanais (1777) at No. 11, Pichegru, betrayed by Leblanc, was arrested (1804). Proceeding down Rue de Richelieu we see grand old mansions throughout its entire length. No. 71 formed part of the hôtel Louvois, given some four years before her tragic death to princesse de Lamballe who built roomy stables there. On the site of No. 62, quite recently demolished, was the hôtel de Talaru, built in 1652, which became one of the most noted prisons of the Terreur, and where its owner, the marquis de Talaru, was himself imprisoned. No. 75 was l’hôtel de Louis de Mornay, one of the most noted lovers of Ninon de Lenclos. No. 78, in the past a famous lace-shop, was owned by the East India Company. No. 93, once the immense hôtel Crozet, property of the ducs de Choiseul, cut through in 1780 by the making of two neighbouring streets, was inhabited in 1715 by Watteau. No. 102 stands on the site of a house owned by Voltaire, inhabited at one time by his niece. No. 104, at first a private mansion, became successively Taverne Britannique (1845-52), Restaurant Richelieu, Union Club du Billard et du Sport. No. 101 was at one time the restaurant du Grand U, so called in 1883 from an article in “Le National” apropos of the _Union Republicaine_. Leading out of Rue Richelieu, in the vicinity of the Bibliothèque Nationale, we see old houses in Rue St-Augustin, and Rue des Filles de St-Thomas, the latter cut short in more recent days by the Place de la Bourse and the Rue du Quatre-Septembre. The busts on No. 7 of the latter street recall a theatrical costume store of past days. No. 21 Rue Feydeau was the site of the Théâtre des Nouveautés, which became the Opéra-Comique, demolished in 1830. Rue des Colonnes was in former days closed at each end by gates. At No. 14 Rue St-Marc, Ernest Logouvé was born, lived, died (1807-1903). La Malibran was born at No. 31. The Bourse stands on the site of the convent of les Filles St-Thomas. Its cellars still exist beneath what was before 1914 the Restaurant Champeaux, Rue du 4 Septembre. The chapel stood till 1802 and was during the Revolution the meeting-place of the reactionary section Le Peletier; the insurgent troops defeated by Buonaparte on the steps of St-Roch had assembled there (1795) (_see_ p. 20). The first stone of the present Bourse was laid in 1808. The building was enlarged in the early years of this century. The Paris Exchange stockbrokers had in early times met at the Pont-au-Change; during the Revolution they gathered in the chapelle des Petits-Pères; later at the Palais-Royal. The fine old door of the hôtel Montmorency-Luxembourg still stands at the entrance to the Passage des Panoramas, leading to the old galleries: Galerie Montmartre and Galerie des Variétés--opening out on Rue Montmartre and Rue Vivienne. Until after the Revolution there were no shops in Rue Vivienne, so full to-day of shops and business houses. It records the name of a certain sire Vivien, King’s secretary, owner of a _hôtel_ in the newly opened thoroughfare. Thierry lived there in 1834, Alphonse Karr in 1835. The great gates of the Bibliothèque Nationale on this side are those which in bygone days closed the Place-Royale, now Place des Vosges. No. 49 is the most ancient Frascati Dining Saloon with the old ballroom candelabras. Many of the houses have interesting old-time vestiges. Rue Notre-Dame-des-Victoires was until after 1633 le “Chemin-Herbu,” the grass-grown road; Nos. 30, 28, 14, 13, 10, 4, 2 are ancient: other old houses have been demolished. The Place-des-Victoires from which it starts was the site of the fine hôtel de Pomponne, which later served as the Banque de France. Most of the houses are ancient with interesting architectural features. Place des Petits-Pères close by is best known for the church there, Notre-Dame-des-Victoires, a name given to record the taking of La Rochelle from the Protestants in 1627. Its first stone was laid by Louis XIII in 1629, but the church was not finished till more than a century later. It was for long the convent chapel of the Augustins Déchaussés, commonly known as the Petits-Pères, from the remarkably short stature of the two monks, its founders. The Lady-chapel is a place of special pilgrimage and is brimful of votive offerings. The church is never empty. Passers-by rarely fail to go in to say a prayer, or spend a quiet moment there; work-girls from the shops and offices and workrooms of the neighbourhood go there in their dinner-hour for rest and shelter from the streets. Services of thanksgiving after victory are naturally a special feature there. The choir has fine pictures by Van Loo. Rue des Petits-Pères dates from 1615 and shows interesting traces of past ages. Rue d’Aboukir lies along the line of three seventeenth-century streets, in one of which Buonaparte lived for a time. Many old houses still stand there; others of historical association have been demolished, modern buildings erected on their site. Half-way down the street is Place du Caire, once the site of that most truly Parisian industry: carding and mattress-making and cleaning. French mattresses are, in normal times, turned inside out, cleaned or refilled very frequently. A hospital and a convent stretched along part of the _place_ and across Passage du Caire in past days. Several houses there are ancient, as also in Rue Alexandrie. In Rue du Mail, at what is now hôtel de Metz, Buonaparte lodged in 1790. We see many old houses. Spontini lived here, and No. 12 was inhabited by Madame Récamier and also by Talma. The modern Rue du Quatre-Septembre has swept away many an interesting old thoroughfare. At No. 100 the Passage de la Cour des Miracles recalls the ancient _cour_ of the name, done away with in 1656, of which some traces still remain--the scene in olden days of feats of apparent healing and of physical transformation whereby the _truands_, persons of no avowed or avowable occupation, gained precarious _deniers_. Out of this long modern street we may turn into many shorter ancient ones. Rue du Sentier, recalling by its name a pathway through a wood--_sentier_, a corruption of _chantier_--has fine old houses and knew in its time many inhabitants of mark. At No. 8 lived Monsieur Lebrun, a famous picture dealer, husband of Madame Vigée Lebrun. At No. 2 dwelt Madame de Staël, at Nos. 22-24, in rooms erewhile decorated by Fragonard, Le Normand d’Étioles, husband of La Pompadour, after his separation from her. No. 33 was the home of his wife in her girlhood and at the time of her marriage. At No. 30 lived Sophie Gay. Rue St-Joseph, so named from a seventeenth-century chapel knocked down in 1800, of which we find some traces, was previously Rue du Temps-Perdu; in the graveyard attached to St-Eustache--later a market--La Fontaine and Molière were buried, their ashes transferred in 1818 to Père-Lachaise. At No. 10 Zola was born (1840). Rue du Croissant (seventeenth century) is a street of ancient houses and the chief newspaper street of the city. Paper hawkers crowd there at certain hours each day, then rush away, vying with one another to call attention to their stock-in-trade. At No. 22, Café du Croissant, at the corner where this street meets the Rue Montmartre, journalists assemble, and there the notable Socialist, Jaurès, was shot dead on the eve of the outbreak of war, July 31st, 1914. The sign at No. 18 is said to date from 1612. In Rue des Jeûneurs (1643)--the name a corruption from _des Jeux-Neufs_--we see more ancient houses and leading out of it the old Rue St-Fiacre, once Rue du Figuier. No. 19 was inhabited in recent years by a lady left a widow after one year’s married life, who, owner of the building, dismissed the tenants of its six large flats and shut herself up in absolute solitude till her death at the age of eighty-nine. No. 23 was designed by Soufflot le Romain (1775). Rue Montmartre in its course continued from arrondissement I, which it leaves at Rue Étienne-Marcel, shows many interesting vestiges. At No. 178 we see a bas-relief of the Porte Montmartre of past days. Within the modern _Brasserie du Coq_, a copy of the automatic cock of Strasbourg Cathedral, dating from 1352. On the frontage of No. 121 a curious set of bells, and a quaint sign, “A la grâce de Dieu,” dating from 1710. No. 118 was known in past days as the house of clocks. Thirty-two were seen on its frontage, the work of a Swiss clockmaker. Going up this old street in order to visit the streets leading out of it, we turn into Rue Tiquetonne, which recalls by its aspect fourteenth-century times, by its name a prosperous baker of that century, a certain M. Rogier de Quinquentonne. Among the ancient houses there, Nos. 4 and 2 have very deep cellars stretching beneath the street. In Rue Dussoubs, which under other names dates back to the fifteenth century, we see more quaint houses. At No. 26 Goldoni died. The short street Marie-Stuart recalls the days when for one brief year the beautiful Scotswoman was Queen Consort of France. The name of Rue Jussienne is a corruption of Marie l’Égyptienne, patron saint of a fourteenth-century chapel which stood there till 1791. At No. 2 lived Madame Dubarry after the death of Louis XV. Rue d’Argout dates as Rue des Vieux-Augustins from the thirteenth century. Here, at No. 28, lived in more modern times, Savalette de Langes, supposed for many years and proved at her death to be a man. In Passage du Vigan at No. 22, we find bas-reliefs in a courtyard. At No. 56, a small ancient _hôtel_. Rue Bachaumont is on the site of the vanished Passage du Saumur, a milliner’s quarter, the most ancient of Paris passages, demolished in