LE JARDIN DES PLANTES
It was in the early years of the seventeenth century that the King’s
physician bought a piece of waste ground--a _butte_ formed of the refuse
of centuries accumulated there--for the culture of the multitudinous
herbs and plants which made up the pharmacopia of the age. Thus was born
the “Jardin Royal de herbes médicinales” laid out in 1626. Chairs of
botany, pharmacy, surgery were instituted and endowed, and in 1650 the
garden was thrown open to the public. A century later Buffon was named
superintendent of the royal garden. He set himself to reorganize and
enlarge. The amphitheatre, the natural history galleries, the chemistry
laboratories, the fine lime-tree avenue are all due to him.
Distinguished naturalists succeeded one another as directors of the
garden, and after the death of Louis XVI a museum of natural history and
a menagerie were set up with what was left of the King’s collection at
Versailles. Additions and improvements were made in succeeding years
till, after the outbreak of war in 1870, the Jardin was bombarded by the
Prussians, and during the siege its live-stock largely drawn upon to
feed the population of Paris. The garden and its buildings have been
added to frequently. The labyrinth is on the site of the hillock bought
by Guy de la Brosse, who first laid it out. A granite statue marks the
spot where he and two notable travellers were buried. Surrounding
streets record the names of great naturalists of different epochs.
In Rue Geoffroy St-Hilaire, once Rue Jardin du Roi, No. 5, now the
Police Station, was built in 1760. At No. 30 a wheel once worked turned
by the water of the Bièvre, now a malodorous drain-stream hidden beneath
the pavement. No. 36 was Buffon’s home. Here he died in 1788. At No. 37
lived Daubenton. At No. 38 stood in olden days the great gate, the
Porte-Royale, of the Jardin du Roi, with to its left the hall, a narrow
space at that time, where the great surgeon Dionis described to a
marvelling assembly of students his wonderful discoveries (1672-73).
That small _cabinet_ was the nucleus of the great anthropological museum
of succeeding centuries.
In Rue Cuvier, in its early days Rue Derrière-les-Murs de Ste-Victoire,
describing accurately its situation, we see at No. 20 a modern fountain
(1840) on the site of one put there in 1671 and traces of the abbey
St-Victor in the courtyard. The pavilion “de l’Administration” of the
Garden is the ancient hôtel Jean Debray (1650), inhabited subsequently
by several men of note. At No. 47 Cuvier died in 1832. In the
eighteenth-century _fiacres_, a recently introduced manner of getting
about, were to be hired at No. 45. The eleventh-century Rue Linné shows
many vestiges of the past. We see Gothic arches of the vanished abbey at
No. 4.
In Rue des Fossés St-Bernard, stretching along the line of
Philippe-Auguste’s wall, between the site of two great gates: Porte
St-Victor, a spot desecrated by the massacres of September, and Porte
St-Bernard, we see Halle-aux-Vins, where abbey buildings stood of yore.
The Halle-aux-Cuirs, in Rue Censier, is on the site of the famous
orphanage “La Miséricorde,” called vulgarly “les Cent Filles” or “les
Cent Vierges.” The apprentice from the Arts and Crafts Institution, who
should choose one of these orphan maidens for his wife, obtained as her
dowry the privilege of becoming at once a full member of the
Corporation.
In Rue de la Clef we have at No. 56 the site of part of the notorious
prison Ste-Pélagie. No. 26 is still owned by the Savouré, whose
ancestors kept the school where Jerôme Bonaparte and many of his
compeers were educated. Rue du Fer-à-Moulin, dating from the twelfth
century, a stretch of blackened walls, has been known by many names. In
the little Rue Scipion leading out of it we see at No. 13 the _hôtel_
built in the sixteenth century for the Tuscan, Scipion Sardini, who came
to France in the suite of Catherine de’ Medici, a rich and rather
scandalous financier; terra-cotta medallions ornament its walls. It
serves now as the bakehouse of the Paris hospitals. In the square
opposite we see the curious piece of statuary: “des Boulangers,” by
Charpentier.
Rue Monge, running from boulevard St-Germain to Avenue des Gobelins, was
cut through old streets of the district in 1859. A fountain Louis XV
brought here from its original site, Rue Childebert, was set up in the
square, and many other old-time relics: statues from the ancient hôtel
de Ville, débris from the Palais de l’Industrie, burnt down in 1897; a
copy of the statue of Voltaire by Houdin, etc.
Rue d’Arras, so named from a college once there, began as Rue des Murs,
referring to the walls of Philippe-Auguste. The concert hall we see was
not long ago Père Loyson’s church. L’École Communale, No. 19 Rue des
Boulangers, is on the site of part of the convent des “Filles
Anglaises,” which had existed there from 1644--razed in 1861.
Rue Rollin began in the sixteenth century as Rue des Moulins-à-vent. On
the site of the house at No. 2 Pascal died in 1662. No. 4, with its fine
staircase, its _grille_ and ancient well in the courtyard, was the home
of Bernardine de St. Pierre, during the years he wrote his world-known
_Paul and Virginie_. Rollin lived and died (1741) at No. 8. Descartes
lived at No. 14. When the street was longer and known as Rue
Neuve-St-Etienne, Manon Philipon, Madame Roland of later days, was a
pupil in the _annexe_ of the English Augustine convent on a site crossed
now by Rue Monge and Rue de Navarre.
In Rue de Navarre we come to Les Arènes, the disinterred remains of the
Roman Arena. They were discovered here just before the war of 1870, then
quickly covered up to be in part restored to daylight in 1883. We see
before us the grey stones, huge blocks and graduated step-like seats
where the population of the city--Lutetians then--passed their hours of
recreation watching the conflicts of wild beasts. It is not, perhaps,
the original arena built here by the Romans, for that was attacked
twice, first by the northern invaders, then by the Christians, many of
its stones used to build the city walls. It was, however, soon restored
... evidently. In the course of subsequent invasions, conquests, new
settlements, constructions and the lapse of years, the Roman theatre
sank beneath the surface to be unearthed in nineteenth-century days.
Modern garden paths and a grand but inharmonious entrance in Louis XIV
style now surround this supremely interesting vestige of a long-gone
age. Children play where savage beasts once fought. Women knit and sew,
old men rest, young men and maidens woo, where Roman soldiers and a
primitive Gallic population once eagerly gathered to watch fierce
combats.[E]
Rue Lacépède: here at No. 1 stood till recently the Hôpital de la Pitié,
founded by Marie de’ Medici in 1613, now replaced by a modern building
in the boulevard de l’Hôpital. Its primary destination was a shelter for
beggars--a refuge--in order to free Paris from the swarms who “gained
their living” by soliciting alms in the streets. The beggars preferred
their liberty. By an edict of some years later, however, beggars were
taken there and closely shut up, safely guarded. They were called in
consequence “les Enfermés.” The hospital grew in extent and importance
and was called “Notre-Dame de la Pitié.” The convent Ste-Pélagie was
organized in a part of its buildings, in 1660, to become at the
Revolution the notorious prison. No. 7 is a handsome eighteenth-century
_hôtel_. Rue Gracieuse has brought down to our time the graceful name of
a family who lived there in the thirteenth century and some ancient
houses. In Rue du Puits de l’Ermite lived the sculptors Coysevox,
Coustou, and the painter Bourdon. The hospice for aged poor in Rue de
l’Épée-de-Bois was formerly an _asile_ founded by Sœur Rosalie, known
for her self-sacrificing work among the cholera-stricken in 1832, and
during the Revolution of 1848. The very name Rue des Patriarches bids us
look for vestiges of past ages. The patriarchs, thus memorized, were
two fourteenth-century ecclesiastics, one bishop of Paris and
Alexandria, the other of Jerusalem, who dwelt in a fine old _hôtel_, the
big courtyard of which has become a market-place, while the street named
after them and a curious _impasse_ stretch across the site of the razed
mansion. The district was a centre of Calvinism during the religious
struggles. The bishop’s old house, “hôtel Chanac,” sheltered numerous
Protestants, and religious services were held there.
Rue de l’Arbalète carries us back to the days when archers had their
garden and training-ground here. Later an apothecary’s garden was laid
out where now we see the extensive modern buildings of the Institut
Agronomique. A pharmaceutical school was built in this old street and
medicinal herbs were cultivated from the end of the fifteenth and early
years of the sixteenth centuries. Remains of a Roman cemetery were found
some years ago beneath the paving-stones near No. 16.
In Rue Daubenton we find the presbytery and ancient side-entrance of
St-Médard, and in the old wall distinct traces of two great gates which
led to the churchyard. Traces of past time are seen also in Rue de la
Pitié, where at No. 3 Robespierre’s sister lived and, in 1834, died.
Rue Cardinal-Lemoine begins across the site of the college founded by
the Cardinal in 1302, suppressed at the Revolution, used subsequently as
a barracks, then razed. The wall of Philippe-Auguste passed on the site
of No. 26. Beneath the house a curious leaden coffin was found in 1908.
At No. 49 we see the handsome but dilapidated façade of the house of the
painter Lebrun, where also Watteau lived for a time. Here the Dames
Anglaises had their well-known convent from 1644 to 1859, when they
moved to Neuilly. At the Revolution the convent was confiscated, yet
Mass was said daily in the chapel through the Terror (_see_ pp. 11, 28).
At No. 65 we see the Collège des Écossais, founded in 1325 by David,
bishop of Moray, to which a second foundation due to the bishop of
Glasgow, 1639, was added, transferred here from Rue des Armendiers, by
Robert Barclay in 1662. Suppressed in 1792, it was used as a prison
under the Terror but restored to the Scots when Revolution days were
over. The seventeenth-century chapel still stands and the heart of James
II is in a casket there. The college staircase, left untouched, is
remarkably fine. Close by, at the end of Rue Thouin, in what was
formerly Place Fourcy, the brothers Perrault, one the famous architect,
the other yet more universally known--the writer of fairy tales--lived
and died. Rue de l’Estrapade recalls the days when, on the _place_ hard
by, rebellious soldiers were punished by being hoisted to the top of a
pole, their hands tied behind their back, then let fall to the ground.
Old-time vestiges are seen all along the street. Rue Clotilde crosses
what were once the grounds of the abbey Ste-Geneviève.