CHAPTER XXIV. IN THE VICINITY OF PLACE ST-MICHEL
AN ancient place and part of the old Rue de l'Hiron-delle,
and an ancient chapel stretched in bygone days where now we see the
broad new Place St-Michel. The colossal fountain we see there was put
up in 1860, replacing a seventeenth-century fountain on the ancient place, which lay a little more to the south. Of the boulevard—the famous "Boule Miche"—we will speak later.
Turning into Rue de l'Hirondelle, in the twelfth century Rue
l'Arondale-en-Laac, then Rue Herondalle, we see remains of the ancient
Collège d'Antin, founded in 1371, and an eighteenth-century
house on the site of the mansion of the bishop of Chartres previously
there. Rue Gît-le-Cœur, probably indicated in
fourteenth-century days the dwelling-place of the King's cook ... Gille his name; cœur, a misspelling for queux, cook. At No. 5 we see remains of hôtel Séguier.
Rue Séguier was a thoroughfare, a country road in
Childebert's time; in the fourteenth century it became a street with
the name Pavée-St-André-des-Arts. Every house has some
interesting feature. The famous Hostellerie St-François till the
eighteenth century on the site of No. 3, was the starting-point of the
coaches for Normandy and Brittany. At No. 6 we see traces of the
hôtel de Nemours. The Frères Cordonniers de
St-Crépin, founded in 1645 (Shoemakers' Confraternity), had its
quarters where we see the Nos. 9, 11, 13. J. de Ste-Beuve, the
Jansenist, was born and in 1677 died at No. 17. At No. 18 we see all
that is left of a fourteenth-century hôtel de Nevers on the site
of an older hôtel. The burial-ground of the church
St-André stretched along part of Rue Suger: the presbytery was
on the site of No. 13. Every house in this narrow old street tells of
past days. At No. 3 we find traces of the chapel of the Collège
de Boissy, founded in 1360 by a Canon of Chartres for seven poor
students. Another old-time college stood in Rue de l'Éperon and
till 1907, an ancient house, a dependency of the church
St-André-des-Arts. Rue Serpente, a winding road in its earliest
days, a street about the year 1200, was the site of the celebrated
hôtel Serpente, and of the firm of printers where Tallien was an
employé. The very modern Rue Danton, with its emphatically
up-to-date structure in re-enforced concrete, has swept away a host of
ancient houses. The hôtel des Sociétés Savantes is
on the site of the hôtel de Thou, l'hôtel des
Etats-de-Blois in the time of Louis XV.
Rue Mignon, twelfth century, recalls yet another college founded in
1343 by a dignitary of Chartres of this name; ancient houses at Nos. 1
and 5.
The most interesting of these old streets is Rue Haute-feuille with its two turrets, one at No. 5, the ancient hôtel of
the Abbots of Fecamp, fourteenth century, the other octagonal, at No.
21, on the corner of what was once part of the Collège Damville
of the same date: there in Roman times stood the castle Altum
Folium— Hautefeuille—of which remains were found in the
fourteenth century. This old street was no doubt a road leading to the
citadel,
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