CHAPTER VII. THE TEMPLE

OF the renowned citadel and domain of mediaeval times, from which the arrondissement takes its name, nothing now remains. A modern square (1865) has been arranged on the site of the mansion and the gardens of the Grand Prieur, but the surrounding streets, several stretching where the Temple once stood and across the site of its extensive grounds, show us historic houses, historic vestiges and associations along their entire course.

The Knights-Templar settled in Paris in 1148. Their domain with its dungeon, built in 1212, its manor and fortified tower, and the vast surrounding grounds, were seized in 1307 and given over to the knights of St. John of Jerusalem, known later as the knights of Malta. From that time to the Revolution the Temple was closely connected with the life of the city. The primitive buildings were demolished, streets built along the site of some of them in the seventeenth century, and an immense battlemented castle with towers and a strong prison erected where the original stronghold had stood. The Temple, as then built, was like the old abbeys and royal palaces: a sort of township, having within its enclosures all that was needful for the daily life of its inhabitants. Besides Louis XVI and his family many persons of note passed weary days in its prison. Sidney Smith effected his escape therefrom. Its encircling walls were razed in the first years of the nineteenth century; and in 1808 Napoleon had the great tower knocked down. In 1814 the Allies made the Grand Priory their headquarters. Louis XVIII gave over the mansion to an Order of Benedictine nuns. In 1848 it served as a barracks. Its end came in 1854, when it was razed to the ground. Then a big place and market hall were set up on the site of the old Temple chapel and its adjacent buildings—a famous market, given up in great part to dealers in second-hand goods—the chief Paris market of occasions (bargains). The Rotonde which had been erected in 1781 was allowed to stand and lasted till 1863. A new ironwork hall, built in 1855, was not demolished till recent years—1905.

Those pretty, gay knick-knacks, that glittering cheap jewellery known throughout the world as "articles de Paris" had their origin among a special class of the inhabitants of the old Temple grounds. No one living there paid taxes. Impecunious persons of varying rank sought asylum there—a society made up in great part of artists and artistically-minded artisans. To gain their daily bread they set their wits and their fingers to work and soon found a ready sale for their Brummagem —not mere Brummagem, however, and all of truly Parisian delicacy of conception and workmanship.

Starting up Rue du Temple, from Rue Rambuteau, this part of it before 1851 Rue Ste-Avoie, we come upon the passage Ste-Avoie, and the entrance to the demolished hôtel, once that of Constable Anne de Montmorency, later, for a time, the Law's famous bank. At No. 71 we see l'hôtel de St-Aignan, built in 1660, used in 1812 as a mairie, with fine doors and Corinthian pilastres in the court. No. 79 was l'hôtel de Montmort (1650). No. 86 is on the site of a famous cabaret of the days of Louis XII. At Nos. 101-103 we see vestiges of l'hôtel de Montmorency. No. 113 was the dependency of a Carmelite convent. At No. 122 Balzac lived in 1882. At No. 153 was the eighteenth-century bureau des Vinaigrettes—Sedan-chairs on wheels. The great door of the Temple, demolished in 1810, stood opposite No. 183. Vestiges were found in recent years beneath the pavement. At No. 195, within the Église Ste-Elisabeth, originally the convent chapel of the Filles de Ste-Elisabeth (1614-1690), we see most beautiful woodwork. Rue Turbigo cut right through the ancient presbytère.

Turning back down this old street to visit the streets leading out of it, we find Rue Dupetit-Thouars, on the site of old hôtels within the Temple grounds. Rue de la Corderie, where the Communards met in 1871. Rue des Fontaines (fifteenth century), with at No. 7 the ancienthôtellerie du Grand Cerf: at No. 15 the hôtel owned by the Superior of the convent of the Madelonnettes—a house of Mercy—suppressed at the Revolution, used as a political prison, later as a woman's prison. Rue Perrée, where a shadowy Temple market is still to be seen, runs through the ancient Temple grounds.

Rue de Bretagne stretches from the Rue de Reaumur at the corner of the Temple Square, in old days known in its course through the Temple property as Rue de Bourgogne, farther on as Rue de Saintonge; leading out of it, at No. 62, the short Rue de Caffarelli runs along the line of the eastern wall of the vanished Temple fortress; at No. 45 is the Rue de Beauce where we come upon the ancient private passage, Rue des Oiseaux, with its vacherie of the old hospice des Enfants-Rouges. At No. 48 opens the ancient Rue du Beaujolais-du-Temple, renamed Rue de Picardie. At No. 41 we find the Marché des Enfants-Rouges, a picturesque old-time market hall with an ancient well in the courtyard. Rue Portefoin, thirteenth century. Rue Pastourelle, of the same epoch where at No. 23 lived the culottier, Biard, who wrote the Revolutionary song: la Carmagnole. Rue des Haudriettes, known in past days as Rue de l'Échelle-du-Temple, for there at its farther end was the Temple pillory and a tall ladder reaching to its summit. The name Haudriette is that of the order of nuns founded by Jean Haudri, secretary to Louis IX, who, given up by his wife as lost while travelling in the East, returned at length to find her living among a community of widows to whom she had made over her home. Haudri maintained the institution thus founded, which was removed later to a mansion, now razed, near the chapel of the Assumption, in Rue St-Honoré, Ruede Brague, until 1348 Rue Boucherie-du-Temple, the Templars meat market. The fine old hotel at Nos. 4 and 6 has ceilings painted by Lebrun. All these streets are rich in old-time houses, old-time vestiges, and they are all, as is the whole of this arrondissement on this side Rue du Temple as far as Rue de Turenne, in the Marais, a name referring to the marshy nature of the district in long-past days—but which was for long in pre-Revolution times the most aristocratic quarter of the city. We find ourselves now before the Archives and the Imprimerie Nationale, the latter to be transferred to its new quarters Rue de la Convention. The frontage of this fine old building and its entrance gates give on the Rue des Francs-Bourgeois, of which more anon (see p. 84). On the western side we see a thick high wall and the Gothic doorway of what was, in the fourteenth century, the Paris dwelling of the redoubtable Constable, Olivier de Clisson, subsequently for nearly two hundred years in the hands of the Guise. In 1687 it was rebuilt for the Princess de Soubise by the architect, Delamair. Pillaged during the Revolution, it became national property, and in 1808 the Archives were placed there by Napoleon. Frescoes, fine old woodwork, magnificent mouldings, architectural work of great beauty are there to be seen. The Duke of Clarence is said to have made the hotel Clisson his abode during the English occupation under Henry V. Going up Rue des Archives we see at No. 53, dating from 1705, the hotel built there by the Prince de Rohan, and onward up the street fine old mansions, once the homes of men and women of historic name and fame. No. 72 is said to have been the "Archives" in the time of Louis XIII. An eighteenth-century fountain is seen in the yardbehind the stationer's shop there. No. 78 was the hôtel of Maréchal de Tallard. No. 79 dates from Louis XIII.

At No. 90 we see traces of the old chapel of the Orphanage des Enfants-Rouges, so called from the colour of the children's uniform. The eastern side of the Imprimerie Nationale adjoining the Archives, built by Delamair, as the hotel de Strasbourg, and commonly known as hotel de Rohan, because four comtes de Rohan were successively bishops of Strasbourg, is bounded by Rue Vieille-du-Temple, that too along its whole course a sequence of old houses bearing witness to past grandeur. No. 54 is the picturesque house and turret built in 1528 by Jean de la Balue, secretary to the duc d'Orléans. No. 56 was once the abode of Loys de Villiers of the household of Isabeau de Bavière. No. 75 was the town house of the family de la Tour-du-Pin-Gouvernet (1720). On the walls of No. 80 we read the old inscription "Vieille rue du Temple." No. 102 was the hôtel de Caumartin, later d'Epernon. Nos. 106 and 110 were dependencies of the hôtel d'Epernon.

Rue des Quatre-Fils on the north side of the Archives and its adjoining buildings, known in past times as Rue de l'Echelle-du-Temple, recalls to mind the romantic adventures of four sons of a certain Aymon, sung by a thirteenth-century troubadour. Most of its houses are ancient. Leading out of it is the old Rue Chariot with numerous seventeenth-century and eighteenth-century houses or vestiges. We peep into the Ruelle Sourdis, a gutter running down the middle of it, once shut in by iron gates and boundary stones. At No. 5 we see what remains of the hôtel Sourdis, which in 1650 belonged to Cardinal Retz. The church St-Jean-St-François, opposite, is the ancient chapel of the convent St-François-des-Capucins du Marais. It replaced the old church St-Jean-en-Grève, destroyed at the Revolution, and here we see, surrounding the nave, painted copies of ancient tapestries telling the story of the miracle of the sacred Hostie which a Jew in mockery sought to destroy by burning. The fête of Reparation kept from the fourteenth century at the church of St-Jean and at the chapel les Billettes has since Temple prison hard by.

In the short Rue du Perche behind the church, lived for a time at No 7 bis Scarron's young widow, destined to become Madame de Maintenon. Fine frescoes cover several of its ceilings. In Rue de 1867 been kept here. Here too, piously preserved, is the chasuble used by the Abbé Edgeworth at the last Mass heard before his execution by Louis XVI in the Poitou we find more interesting old houses. In Rue de Normandie Nos. 10, 6, 9 show interesting features, old courtyards, etc. Turning from Rue Chariot into Rue Béranger, known until 1864 by the name of the Grand Prior of the Temple de Vendôme, we find the hôtel de Vendôme, Nos. 5 and 3, dating from 1752 where Béranger lived and died. At No. 11, now a business house, lived Berthier de Sauvigny, Intendant-Général de Paris in 1789, hung on a lamp-post after the taking of the Bastille, one of the first victims of the Revolution.

Running parallel to Rue Chariot, starting from the little Rue du Perche, Rue Saintonge, formed by joining two seventeenth-century streets, Rue Poitou and Rue Touraine, shows us a series of ancient dwellings. From October, 1789, to 15th July, 1791, Robespierre lived at No. 64. A fine columned entrance court at No. 5 has been supplanted by a brand-new edifice. The hôtel at No. 4, dating originally from about 1611, was rebuilt in 1745.

Rue de Turenne, running in this arrondissement from Rue Chariot to the corner of the Place des Vosges, began as Rue Louis, then in its upper part was Rue Boucherat, as an ancient inscription at No. 133 near the fountain Boucherat records. From the old street whence it starts, Rue St.-Antoine in the 4th arrondissement, it is a long line of ancient hôtels, the homes in bygone days of men of notable names and doings; one side of the convent des Filles-du-Calvaire stretched between the Rue des Filles-du-Calvaire and Rue Pont-au-Choux. No. 76 was the home of the last governor of the Bastille, Monsieur de Launay. The church of St-Denis-du-St-Sacrament at No. 70 was built in 1835 on the site of the chapel of a convent razed in 1826, previously a mansion of Maréchal de Turenne. At No. 56, Scarron lived and died. No. 54 was the abode of the comte de Montrésor, noted in the wars of the Fronde. At No. 41, fresh water flows from the fontaine de Joyeuse on the site of the ancient hôtel de Joyeuse. We find a beautiful staircase in almost every one of these old hôtels.

Shorter interesting old streets lead out of this long one on each side.

Rue du Parc-Royal, memorizes the park and palace of Les Tournelles, razed to the ground after the tragic death of Henri II by his widow, Catherine de' Medici (see p. 8). No. 4, dating from 1620, was inhabited by successive illustrious families until the early years of the nineteenth century. There, till recently, was seen a wonderful carved wood staircase. Many of the ancient houses erewhile here have been demolished in recent years, and are supplanted by modern buildings and a garden-square.

Contents