CHAPTER XXV. L'ODÉON

AN interesting corner of Old Paris lies on the north-^east side of the Odéon. Rue Racine, opening on the place before the theatre, runs through the ancient territory of the Cordeliers. Vestiges of a Roman cemetery were found in recent years beneath the soil at No. 28, and at No. 11 were unearthed traces of the city wall of Philippe-Auguste. George Sand lived for a time at No. 3. Rue de l'École de Médecine was once in part Rue des Cordeliers, in part Rue des Boucheries-St-Germain, a name telling its own tale. No less than twenty-two butchers' shops flourished here. At the outbreak of the Revolution a butcher was president of the famous club des Cordeliers established in the ancient convent chapel (1791-94). The refectory, the church-like structure we see at No. 15, now an anatomy museum, built by Anne of Bretagne in the fifteenth century, is all that remains of the convent buildings dating in part from the early years of the twelfth century, which covered a great part of this district from the days of Louis IX. Many of these buildings were put to secular uses before the outbreak of the Revolution. The cloister stood till 1877, made into a prison, then was razed to make room for the École de Médecine built in part with the ancient cloister stones. The chapel stood on what is now Place de l'École-de-Médecine. The amphitheatre of the School of Surgery at No. 5, an association founded by St. Louis, dates from the end of the seventeenth century on the site of an older structure. Above the cellars at No. 4 stood in olden days the College of Damville. The Faculté de Médecine at No. 12 is on the site of the Collège-Royal de Bourgogne, founded in 1331. The first stone of the present building was laid by Louis XVI. The edifice was enlarged in later days, restored in 1900. The bas-relief on its frontal, sculptured as a figure of Louis XV, was by order of the Commune transformed in 1793 into the woman draped we see there now. Skulls of famous persons, some noted criminals, may be seen at the Museum. Marat lived and died in Rue des Cordeliers. There Charlotte Corday was seized by the enraged mob. Traces of the ancient convent may be seen in the short Rue Antoine-Dubois. Rue Dupuytren lies across what was the convent graveyard. Nos. 7-9 were dependencies of the old convent. No. 7 was later a free school of drawing directed by Rosa Bonheur. Rue Monsieur-le-Prince, so named in 1806, because of the vicinity of the hôtel du Prince de Condé, was in olden days Chemin des Fossés. We see there many characteristic houses. Auguste Comte died at No. 10 in 1857.

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