CHAPTER XXXV. ON THE WAY TO MONTMARTRE

RUE DE CLICHY was once upon a time the Roman road between Paris and Rouen, taking in its way the village Cligiacum, For long in later days it was known as Rue du Coq, when the old chateau stood near its line. It was in a house of Rue de Clichy, inhabited by the Englishman Crawford, that Marie-Antoinette and her children had a meal on the way to Varennes. The three successive "Tivoli" were partly on the site of No. 27, in this old street. There too was the "Club de Clichy," whose members opposed the government of the Directoire. The whole district leading up to the heights of Montmartre was then, as now, a quarter of popular places of amusement, the habitation of artistes of varying degree, but we find here few old-time vestiges. Where Rue Nouvelle was opened in 1879 the prison de Clichy, a debtor's prison, had previously stood. No. 81 is the four-footed animals' hospital founded in 1811. Zola died at No. 21 Rue de Bruxelles. Heine lived from 1848-57 at No. 50 Rue Amsterdam. Rue Blanche was Rue de la Croix-Blanche in the seventeenth century. Berlioz lived at No. 43. Roman remains were found beneath Nos. 1618. Rue Pigalle has been known by six or seven different names, at one time that of Rue du Champ-de-Repos, on account of the proximity of the cemetery St-Roch. No. 12 belonged to Scribe, who died there (1861). No. 67 is an ancient station for post-horses. Place Pigalle was in past days Place de la Barrière de Montmartre. The fountain is on the site of the ancient custom-house. Puvis de Chavannes and Henner had their studios at No. 11, now a restaurant. Rue de la Rochechouart made across abbey lands, the lower part dating from 1672, records the name of an abbess of Montmartre. Gounod lived at No. 17 in 1867. Halévy in 1841. The Musée Gustave Moreau at No. 14 was the great artist's own hôtel, bequeathed with its valuable collection to the State at his death in 1898. Marshal Ney lived at No. 12. In Rue de la Tour des Dames a windmill tower, the property of the nuns of Montmartre, stood undisturbed from the fifteenth century to the early part of the nineteenth. The modern mansion at No. 3 (1822) is on land belonging in olden days to the Grimaldi. Talma died in 1826 at No. 9. Rue la Bruyère has always been inhabited by distinguished artists and literary men. Berlioz lived for a time at No. 45. Rue Henner, named after the artist who died at No. 5 Rue la Bruyère, is the old Rue Léonie. We see an ancient and interesting house at No. 13. No. 12 hôtel des Auteurs et Compositeurs Dramatiques, a society founded in 1791 by Beaumarchais.

Rue de Douai reminds us through its whole length of noted literary men and artists of the nineteenth century. Halévy and also notable artists have lived at No. 69. Ivan Tourgueneff at No. 50. Francisque Sarcey at No. 59. Jules Moriac died at No. 32 (1882). Gustave Doré and also Halévy lived for a time at No. 22. Claretie at No. 10. Edmond About owned No. 6.

The old Rue Victor-Massé was for long Rue de Laval in memory of the last abbess of Montmartre. At No. 9, the abode of an antiquarian, we see remarkably goodmodern statuary on the Renaissance frontage. No. 12 till late years was l'hotel de Chat Noir, the first of the artistic montmartrois cabarets due to M. Salis (1881). At No. 26 we turn into Avenue Frochot, where Alexandre Dumas, père, lived, where at No. 1 the musical composer Victor Masse died (1884), and of which almost every house is, or once was, the abode of artists. Passing down Rue Henri-Monnier, formerly Rue Breda, which with Place Breda was, during the first half of the nineteenth century, a quarter forbidden to respectable women, we come to Rue Notre-Dame de Lorette. It dates from the same period as the church built there (1823-37), and wherein we see excellent nineteenth-century frescoes and paintings. This street, like most of those around it, has been inhabited by men of distinction in art or letters: Isabey, Daubigny, etc. Mignet lived there in 1849. Rue St-Georges dates from the early years of the eighteenth century. Place St-Georges was opened a century later on land belonging to the Dosne family. Mme Dosne and her son-in-law lived at No. 27. The house was burnt down in 1871, rebuilt by the State, given to l'lnstitut by Mlle Dosne in 1905, and organized as a public library of contemporary history. Nos. 15-13, now the Illustration office, date from 1788. Auber died at No. 22 (1871). The hotel at No. 2 was owned by Barras and inhabited at one time by Mme Tallien.

The three busy streets, Rue Laffitte, Rue le Peletier, Rue Drouot, start from boulevard des Italiens, cross streets we have already looked into, and are connected with others of scant historic interest.

Rue Laffitte, so named in 1830 in memory of the great financier who laid the foundation of his wealthy future when an impecunious lad, by stooping, under the eye of the commercial magnate waiting to interview him, to pick up a pin that lay in his path. Laffitte died Regent of the Banque de France. So popular was he that when after 1830 he found himself forced to sell his handsome mansion No. 19—l'hotel de la Borde—a national subscription was got up enabling him to buy it back. Offenbach lived at No. 11. At No. 12 we find an interesting old court. The great art lover and collector, the Marquis of Hertford, lived at No. 2, the old hotel d'Aubeterre. No. 1, once known as la Maison Doree, now a post office, was the old hotel Stainville inhabited by the Communist Cerutti who, in his time, gave his name to the street. Mme Tallien also lived there. For some years before 1909 it was the much frequented Taverne Laffitte.

In Rue Le Peletier, the Opera-house burnt down in 1783, was from the early years of the nineteenth century on the site of two old mansions: l'hotel de Choiseul and l'hotel de Grammont. On the site of No. 2, Orsini tried to assassinate Napoleon III. At No. 22 we see a Protestant church built in the time of Napoleon I.

Rue Drouot, the Salle des Ventes, the great Paris "Auction-rooms" at No. 9, built in 1851, is on the site of the ancient hotel Pinon de Quincy, subsequently a Mairie. The present Mairie of the arrondissement at No. 6 dates from 1750. In the Revolutionary year 1792 it was the War Office, then the Salon des Strangers where masked balls were given: les bals des Victimes. No. 2 the Gaulois office, almost wholly rebuilt at the end of the eighteenth century and again in 1811, was originally a fine mansion built in 1717, the home of Le Tellier, later of the due de Talleyrand, and later still the first Paris Jockey Club (1836-57). The famous dancer Taglioni also lived here at one time,Rue Grange-Batelière was a farm— la grange bataillée— with fortified towers, owned in the twelfth century by the nuns of Ste-Opportune. At No. 10 we see the handsome hôtel with fine staircase and statues, built in 1785 for a gallant captain of the Gardes Françaises. There in the days of Napoleon III was the Cercle Romantique, where Victor Hugo, A. de Musset and other literary celebrities were wont to meet.

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