CHAPTER LI. THE QUAYS

THE quays of the Seine in its course through Paris are picturesque in the extreme and show at almost every step points of historic interest. That interest is strongest, the aspect of the quays most quaint and entrancing, where they pass through the heart of the city.

Let us start from the Point-du-Jour, the "Dawn of Day," at the point where the boundary-line of Paris touches the banlieue to the south-east. The name refers to a famous duel fought here at the break of day on a memorable morning in 1743. Taking the Rive Droite, the right bank, we follow the Quai d'Auteuil which, till the closing years of the nineteenth century, was a mere roadway along which the river boats were loaded and unloaded. The fine viaduct across the river was built in 1864-65. It was fiercely bombarded in the war of 1870. On Sundays and fete-days this quaint quay is gay with holiday-makers who crowd its popular cafes, drinking-booths and shows.

Quai de Passy was made in 1842 along that part of the old high road to Versailles. Some quaint old houses still stand there. At No. 26 we see a pavilion Louis XVI. No 32 is surrounded by a fine park-wherein we find vestiges of the home of the abbe Ragois, Madame de Maintenon's confessor, and ferruginous springs. Rue Berton, leading up from the Quai, is one of the most picturesque old streets of Paris. At No. 17 we find anextensive property and a Louis XV hôtel, once the home of successive families of the noblesse and of the unhappy princesse de Lamballe, now a Maison de Santé—a private asylum. The borne at No. 24 has been there since 1731, a boundary mark between the manors of Passy and Auteuil.

Quai de la Conférence, arrondissement VIII, dates from the latter years of the eighteenth century, its name referring to the middle of the previous century, when Spanish statesmen entered Paris by a great gate in its vicinity to confer concerning the marriage of Louis XIV and Marie-Thérèse.

Cours-la-Reine, bordering the Seine along this quay, was first planted by Marie de' Medici in 1618, on market-garden ground. It was a favourite and fashionable promenade in the time of the Fronde; a moat surrounded it and iron gates closed it in. At No. 16 of Rue Bayard leading out of it, we see the Maison de François I, its sculptures the work of Jean Goujon, brought here, bit by bit, in 1826 from the quaint old village of Moret near Fontainebleau where it was first built. On its frontage we read an inscription in Latin.

Quai des Tuileries was formed under Louis XIV along the line of Charles V's boundary wall razed in 1670. The walls of the Louvre bordering this quay, dating originally from the time of Henri IV, who wished to join the Louvre to the Tuileries, then without the city bounds, by a gallery, were rebuilt by Napoleon III (1863-68). Place du Carrousel behind this frontage, so named from a carrousel given there by Louis XIV, in the garden known then as the parterre de Mademoiselle, dates from 1662. At the Revolution it became for the time the soi-disant Place de la Fraternité. On this fraternal (?) place political prisoners were beheaded, while the conventionels looked on from the Tuileries windows. And it was the scene of the historic days June 20th and August 10th, 1792, later of the 24th July, 1830.

L'Arc de Triomphe du Carrousel dates from 1806, set up to commemorate the campaign of 1805. The large square, in the centre of which stands the colossal statue of Gambetta, known in the time of the Second Empire as the Cour Napoleon III, was covered in previous days by a number of short, narrow streets, interlacing. Several mansions, one or two chapels, a small burial-ground, and a theatre, were there among these streets and on beyond, and the grounds of the great hospital for the blind, the "Quinze-Vingts," stretched along the banks of the Seine at this point, extending from the hospital, in Rue St-Honore, its site from its foundation till its removal to Rue de Charenton in 1779. Alongside the Quai we see the terrace "Bord de l'Eau," of the Tuileries gardens. The Orangerie reconstructed in 1853 was in the seventeenth century a garden wherein was the famous Cabaret Regnard, forerunner of the modern Casino. From this terrace to the Tuileries Palace ran the subterranean passage made by Napoleon I for Marie Louise, and here was the Pont-tournant, built by a monk in 1716, across which Louis XVI was led back on his return from the flight to Varennes. The Quai de Louvre is a union of several stretches of quay known of old by different names, the most ancient stretch, that between the Pont-Neuf and Rue du Louvre, dating from the thirteenth century. In the jardin de l'Infante, bordering the palace, here the old palace of the time of Catherine de' Medici, we see statues of Velasquez, Raffet, Meissonnier, Boucher. Reaching the houses along the quay we see at No. 10 the ancient Café de Parnasse, now the Bouillon du Pont-Neuf, where Danton was wont to pass many hours of the day and ended by wedding Gabrielle Charpentier, its landlord's daughter. At No. 8, built by Louis XVI's dentist, we see a fine wrought-iron balcony. And now we come to the ancient Quai de la Mégisserie, dating from the time of Charles V, first as Quai de la Sannierie, "tools for saltmaking" quay, then as Quai de la Ferraille, "iron-instrument" quay. Its present name, too, denotes a Paris industry, the preparation of sheepskins. The cross-roads where it meets Quai du Louvre and the Pont-Neuf went in olden days by the name Carrefour des Trois-Maries, also by that of Place du Four.

The "Belle Jardinière" covers the site of the Forum Episcopi, the episcopal prison of the Middle Ages, later a royal prison rebuilt in 1656 by de Gondi, the first archbishop of Paris. Its prisoners were for the most part actors and actresses. Interesting old streets open on this ancient quay. At No. 12, we turn into Rue Bertin-Poirée, a thoroughfare in the earlier years of the thirteenth century, where at No. 5 we see a quaint, time-worn sign of the Tour d'Argent, and several black-walled houses. The thirteenth-century Rue Jean-Lantier, memorizing a Parisian of that long-gone age, lies, in its upper part, across what was the Place du Chevalier du Guet, from the hôtel built there for a Knight of the Guet (the Watch) of Louis IX's time. Rue des Lavandières, of the same period, recalls the days when lavender growers and lavender dealers lived and plied their thriving trade here. At No. 13 we see a fine heraldic shield devoid of signs; at No. 6, old bas-reliefs. Rue des Deux-Boules dates under other names from the twelfth century.

Quai des Gesvres was built by the Marquis de Gesvres in 1641, The ancient arcades upon which it rests, hidden away with their vaulted roofing, still support this old quay. The shops they once sheltered were knocked to pieces in 1789. The Café at No. 10, built in 1855, was named "A la Pompe Notre-Dame," to record the existence till then on the bridge, Pont Notre-Dame, of the twin pumps from which the inhabitants of the neighbourhood drew their water. Rue de la Tâcherie (tâche, task, work) was known in thirteenth-century days as Rue de la Juiverie. This is still the Jews' quarter of the city.

Quai de l'Hôtel de Ville was formed in its present aspect in the nineteenth century, of three ancient thoroughfares along the banks of the Seine. Corn and hay were in old days landed here. On the walls of the house No. 34 we see the date 1548, and find within an interesting old staircase. At No. 90 opens the old Rue de Brosse, named in memory of the architect of the fine portal of St-Gervais, before us here, and of the Luxembourg palace, close by the ancient impasse at the south end of the church; and at the junction of Quai des Célestins, opens the twelfth-century Rue des Nonnains d'Hyères, where the nuns d'Yerres had of old a convent. Almost every house is ancient. In the court at No. 21 we see the interesting façade of the hôtel d'Aumiont, now the Pharmacie Centrale des Hôpitaux.

Quai des Célestins, in the district of the vanished convent has many interesting vestiges of the past. No. 32 is on the site of the Tour Barbeau, where the wall of Philippe-Auguste ended, and of the tennis-court which served at one time as a theatre for Molière and his company (1645). The walls of No. 22 are one side of the fine old hôtel de Vieuville. At No. 16 we find a curious old court. Nor 14, once hôtel Beaumarchais, then petit hôtel Vieuville, at one time used as a Jewish temple, has a splendid frescoed ceiling. We see remains of old hôtels at No. 6 and 4. No. 2, l'École Massillon, built as a private mansion, l'hôtel Fieubet, the work of Mansart (seventeenth century), was restored in 1850, enlarged by the Oratoriens in 1877.

Quai Henri IV stretches along the ancient line of the île Louviers joined to the Rive Droite in 1843, the property of different families of the noblesse till 1790. At No. 30 the Archives de la Seine.

Quai de la Râpée, named from the country house of a statesman of the days of Louis XV, is bordered along its whole course by old, but generally sordid, structures, in olden day's drinking booths. Passage des Mousquetaires at No. 18 records the vicinity of the Caserne des Mousquetaires, now l'Hôpital des Quinze-Vingts.

Quai de Bercy, records by its name the bergerie, in old French bercil, here in long-gone days. Here, too, there was a castle built by Le Vau and extensive gardens laid out by the great seventeenth-century gardener Le Nôtre. Their site was given up in the latter half of the nineteenth century for the Entrepôts de Bercy.

Picturesque old quays surround the islands on the Seine. Quai de l'Horloge, overlooked by the venerable clock-tower of the Palais de Justice, went in past days by the name Quai des Morfondus, the quay of people chilled by cold river mists and blasting winds. When opticians made that river-bank their special quarter, it became Quai des Lunettes. Lesage,author of Gil Bias, lived here in 1715, at the Soleil d'Or. No. 41, where dwelt the engraver Philipon, Mme Roland's father, is known as the house of Madame Roland, for it was the home of her girlhood. No. 17 dates from Louis XIII.

Quai des Orfèvres, the goldsmith's quay, dating from the end of the sixteenth and first years of the seventeenth centuries, lost its most ancient, most picturesque structures by the enlarging of the Palais de Justice in recent years. In ancient days a Roman wall passed-here. At No. 20 of the Rue de Harlay, opening out of it, we see part of an ancient archway. At No. 2 a Louis XIII house. Nos. 52-54 on the quai date from 1603, the latter once the firm of jewellers implicated in the affaire du collier. At No. 58 lived Strass, the inventor of the simili-diamonds.

Quai de la Cité was built in 1785, on the site of the ancient port-aux-oeufs, remains of which were unearthed in making the metropolitan railway, a few years ago. Along these banks we see the Paris bird shops; the Marché-aux-Oiseaux is held here. And close by is the Marché-aux-Fleurs. Merovingian remains were found beneath the surface on this part of the quay in 1906. Thick, strong walls believed to have been built by Dagobert, inscriptions, capitals, tombstones—the remains of oldest Paris.

Quai de l'Archevêché records the existence there of the archbishop's palace built in 1697 by Cardinal de Noailles, pillaged and razed to the ground in 1831. The sacristy and presbytery we see there now are modern. This is the quay of the Paris Morgue, the Dead-house, brought here in 1864 from the Marché-Neuf, which had been its site since 1804, when it was removed from le Grand Châtelet. For years past we have been told it is "soon" to be again removed, taken to a remoter corner of the city.

The Square de l'Archevêché, laid out in 1837, was in olden days a stretch of waste land known as the "Motte aux Papelards," the playground of the Cathedral Staff. Boileau's Paris home was here in a street long swept away. His country-house, as we know, was at Auteuil. In 1870 the square was turned for the time into an artillery ground.

Quai de Bourbon on the île St. Louis dates from 1614. Every house along its line is interesting, of seventeenth-century date for the most part. At No. 3, we see a shop of the days and style Louis XV. Nos. 13-15, hôtel de Charron, where in modern times Meissonnier had his studio. We see fine doors and doorways, courts, staircases, balustrades, at every house. No. 29 was the home of Roualle de Boisgelon. Philippe de Champaigne lived for a time at No. 45.

Quai d'Orléans was named after Gaston, the brother of Louis XIII. No. 18 is the hôtel Roland. No. 6 is a Polish museum and library.

Quai de Béthune, once Quai du Dauphin, named by the Revolutionists Quai de la Liberté, shows us seventeenth-century houses along its entire course. No. 32 was the home of the statesman Turgot in his youth— his father's house. Subterranean passages ran to the Seine from No. 30, and some other riverine houses. At No. 24, built by Le Vau, we find an interesting court, with fountain, etc.

Quai d'Anjou is another Orleans quay, for Gaston was duc d'Anjou. No. 1 is the splendid hôtel Lambert de Thorigny. No. 5, the "petit hôtel Poisson de Marigny," brother of Mme de Pompadour. No. 7, began as part of the hôtel Lambert, and is now headquarters of the municipal bakery directors. Nos. 11, 13, hôtel of Louis Lambert de Thorigny. No. 17, hôtel Lauzun, husband of "La Grande Mademoiselle," in later times the habitation of several distinguished men of letters: Baudelaire, Théophile Gautier, etc. The society of the "Parisiens de Paris" bought it in 1904, a magnificent mansion, classed as "Monument historique," under State protection, therefore, in regard to its upkeep. Nos. 23 and 25 are built on staves over four old walls. No. 35 was built by Louis XIV's coachman.

RIVE GAUCHE (Left Bank).

We will start again from the south-western corner. Here in 1777, in the little riverside hamlet beyond Paris, a big factory was built, where was first made the disinfectant, of so universal use in France, known as eau de Javel. The Quai de Javel was constructed some fifty years later.

Quai de Grenelle, a rough road from the eighteenth century, was built at the same period. The Allée des Cygnes owes its name to the ancient île des Cygnes, known in the sixteenth century and onwards as île Maquerelle, or mal querelle, for the secluded islet on the Seine, joined later to the river-bank, offered a fine spot in those days for fights and quarrels. In the time of Louis XIV the islet was a public promenade, and the King had swans put there, hence its name.

Quai d'Orsay memorizing a famous parliamentary man of his day, Prévôt des Marchands, first constructed in the early years of the eighteenth century, was known from 1802 to 1815 as Quai Buonaparte. It extends far along the 7th arrondissement. There we see along its borders the bright gardens of the recently laid out park of the Champ de Mars, and numerous smart modern streets and avenues opening out of it. No. 105 is the State Garde-Meuble, its walls sheltering magnificent tapestries, and historic relics of the days of kings and emperors. At No. 99 were the imperial stables. No 97, Ministère du Travail. The Ministère des Affaires Étrangères (Foreign Office), at No. 37, is a modern structure. The Palais de la Présidence, at No. 35, dates from 1722. The Palais-Bourbon from the same date.

The busy Gare d'Orléans, so prominent a modern structure along the quay, covers the site of the old Palais d'Orsay, and an ancient barracks burnt to the ground in 1871. In an inner courtyard at No. 1 we find the remains of the ancient hôtel de Robert de Cotte, royal architect-in-chief, in the early years of the eighteenth century.

Quai Voltaire was known in part of its course in eighteenth-century days as Quai des Théatins. It was constructed under Mazarin, restored in 1751. Many names of historic note are associated with the handsome house 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 (Malacquis) 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.

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 hotel of the comte de Bruillevert. The Académie bookseller, Didier-Perrin, is established in the ancient hotel Feydeau et Montholon. No. 25 was built by François I. No. 23opened 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 Napoleon'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. The quay bore several successive names till its entire reconstruction in early nineteenth-century years, when it was renamed in memory of Napoleon'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.

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