RUE ST-JACQUES
Passing amid the ancient colleges and churches, streets and houses we
have been visiting, runs the old Rue St-Jacques. It begins at the banks
of the Seine, stretches through the whole arrondissement, to become on
leaving it a faubourg.
The line it follows was in a long-past age the Roman road from Lutetia
to Orléans--the Via Superior--_la grande rue_--of early Paris history.
Along its course in Roman times the Aqueduc d’Arcueil brought water from
Rungis to the Palace of the Thermes (_see_ p. 138). It is from end to
end a long line of old-time buildings or vestiges of those swept away.
The famous couvent des Jacobins extended across the site of the
Bibliothèque de l’École de Droit and adjacent structures. At No. 172
stood the Porte St-Jacques in Philippe-Auguste’s great wall.
We see a fine old door at No. 5, a house with two-storied cellars. At a
house on the site of No. 218 Jean de Meung wrote the _Roman de la Rose_.
The famous poem was published lower down in the same street.
The church St-Jacques-du-Haut-Pas stands on the high ground we reach at
No. 252, a seventeenth-century structure on the site of a chapel built
in the fourteenth century by the monks from Italy known as the
_Pontifici_, makers of bridges constructed to give pilgrims the means
of crossing a _mau pas_ or _mauvais pas_, i.e. a dangerous or difficult
passage in rivers or roads. The beautiful woodwork within the
church--that of the organ and pulpit--was brought here from the ancient,
demolished church St-Benoît (_see_ p. 140). We notice several good
pictures. The fine stained glass once here was all smashed at the
Revolution. The hôpital Cochin memorizes in the name of its founder an
eighteenth-century vicar there. The churchyard was where Rue de
l’Abbé-de-l’Épée now runs, known at one time as Ruelle du
Cimetière-St-Jacques.
No. 254 _bis_, the national Deaf and Dumb Institution, is the ancient
_commanderie_ of the Frères hospitaliers de St-Jacques-du-Haut-Pas--the
Pontifici--given for the purpose in 1790, partly rebuilt in 1823. The
statue of Abbé de l’Épée, inventor of the alphabet for the deaf and
dumb, in the court is the work of a deaf and dumb sculptor. The trunk of
the tree we see near it is said to be that of an elm planted there by
Sully three hundred years ago. At No. 262 we see vestiges of a
_vacherie_, once the farm St-Jacques. At No. 261 we may turn into Rue
des Feuillantines, where at No. 10 we see vestiges of the convent that
was at one time in part the abode of George Sand, then of Mme Hugo,
mother of the poet, and her children; later Jules Sardou lived in the
_impasse_, now merged in the _rue_. At No. 269 we find some walls of the
monastery founded by English Benedictines in 1640, to which a few years
later they added a chapel dedicated to St. Edmond. The fabric is still
the property of English bishops. It is used as a great music school:
“Maison de la Schola Cantorum.” The door seen between two fine old
pillars at No. 284 led in olden days to the Carmelite convent where
Louise de la Vallière took definite refuge and acted as “sacristan”
till her death; Rue du Val-de-Grâce runs where the convent stood.[D]
The military hospital Val-de-Grâce was founded as a convent early in the
seventeenth century. Anne d’Autriche installed there the impoverished
Benedictines of Val Parfond, or Profond, evacuated from their quarters
hard by owing to an inundation from the Bièvre. In their gratitude they
changed their name: the nuns of Val Profond became sisters of
Val-de-Grâce. In 1645 Louis XIV, the child Anne d’Autriche had so
ardently prayed for laid the first stone of the chapel dome, built on
the model of St. Peter’s at Rome. The church is now used only for
funerals and indispensable military services. The dependency of
Val-de-Grâce was built by Catherine de’ Medici, the catacombs lie below
it and the surrounding houses.