ANCIENT STREETS OF THE FAUBOURG SAINT-GERMAIN
The extensive district on the left bank of the Seine, through which was
cut in modern times the wide boulevard St-Germain, was in its remotest
days the Villa Sancti Germani, with its “_prés-aux-clercs_” a rural
expanse surrounding the abbey and quite distinct from the city of Paris,
without its bounds. The inhabitants of that privileged district were
exempt from Paris “rates and taxes,” to use our latter-day expression,
and enjoyed other legal immunities. They were subject only to the
authority of the abbey administration and were actively employed in
agricultural and other rustic occupations for the abbey benefit. The
territory was a region of thatched-roofed dwellings, barns and
granaries. When at length certain _grands seigneurs_ chose the district
for the erection of country mansions, these newly built houses were soon
forcibly abandoned, many of them destroyed, in the course of the Hundred
Years’ War. A century or more later more mansions were built and the
bourg St-Germain grew into the aristocratic quarter it finally became
after the erection of the Tuileries, Catherine de’ Medeci’s new palace,
in the middle of the sixteenth century. The venerable old Rue du Bac was
made on the left bank of the Seine in a straight line with the ford
(_bac_) across the river in the year 1550, for the transport of
materials needed in the construction of the palace. The rough road
along which the carters came with their loads, stone from the southern
quarries, etc., grew into a fashionable street in the early years of the
century following, when, after due authorization of the abbé of
St-Germain-des-Prés, fine new _hôtels_ were built in every direction
across the Prè-aux-Clercs, to be within easy distance of the Tuileries
and the Court. Thus was created, in the first years of the eighteenth
century, the patrician Faubourg St-Germain. The old houses in Rue du Bac
which were nearest the river were burnt by the Communards in 1871, when
the Tuileries itself was destroyed.
The headquarters of the Mousquetaires Gris was once on the site of the
houses Nos. 18-17. Many seventeenth- and eighteenth-century houses still
stand. At No. 37 we find an old and interesting court. No. 46, hôtel
Bernard, was successively inhabited by men of note, much of its ancient
interior decoration has been removed. No. 94 belonged till recently to
the Frères Chrétiens. No. 85 was once the royal monastery known as les
Récollettes, subsequently in turn a theatre, a dancing saloon, a concert
hall. At No. 98 Pichegru is said to have passed his first night in
Paris. Here the Chouans held their secret meetings and Cadoudal lay in
hiding. We see a fine door, balcony and staircase at No. 97. No. 101
dates from the time of Louis XIV. Nos. 120-118, hôtel de
Clermont-Tonnerre; Chateaubriand died here in 1848. No. 128 is the
Séminaire des Missions Étrangères, founded 1663 by Bernard de
Ste-Thérèse, bishop of Babylone. No. 136 hôtel de Crouseilhes. No. 140
began as a _maladrerie_, was later the abode of the King’s falconer, and
was given in 1813 to the Order of St-Vincent-de-Paul. Mme Legras,
St-Vincent-de-Paul’s ardent fellow-worker, was buried in the chapel.
The great shops of the Bon Marché stretch where private mansions stood
of yore.
Rue de Lille, formerly Rue de Bourbon, has many ancient houses. We see
in the wall of No. 14 an old sundial with inscriptions in Latin. At No.
26 we find vestiges of a chapel founded by Anne d’Autriche. No. 67,
built in 1706 for President Duret, was annexed later to the _hôtel_ of
prince Monaco-Valentinois. No. 79, hôtel de Launion, 1758, was the house
of Charlotte Walpole, who became Mrs. Atkins, the devoted friend of the
Bourbons, and spent a fortune in her efforts to save the Dauphin. She
died here in 1836. No. 64, built in 1786 for the prince de Salm-Kyrburg,
was gained in a lottery by a wig-maker’s assistant, in the first days of
the First Empire, an adventurer who bought the pretty palace of
Bagatelle beyond Paris, was arrested for forgery, then disappeared. Used
as a club, then, in 1804, as the palace of the Légion d’Honneur, it was
burnt by the Communards in 1871, rebuilt at the cost of the
_légionnaires_ in 1878. No. 78, built by Boffrand, was the home of
Eugène de Beauharnais; we see there the bedroom of Queen Hortense.
German Embassy before the war.
Rue de Verneuil is another seventeenth-century street built across the
Pré-aux-Clercs. Nos. 13-15 was first a famous eighteenth-century
riding-school, then the Académie Royale Dugier; later, till 1865, Mairie
of the arrondissement. The inn at No. 24 was the meeting-place of
royalists in the time of the Empire.
Rue de Beaume has several interesting _hôtels_, their old-time features
well preserved. In the seventeenth century Carnot’s ancestors lived
between the Nos. 17-25. At No. 10 we see remains of the headquarters of
the Mousquetaires Gris, which extended across the meeting-point of the
four streets: Beaume, Verneuil, Bac, Lille. No. 2 was l’hôtel
Mailly-Nesle.
Rue des Saints-Pères marks the boundary-line between arrondissements VI
and VII, an old-world street of historic associations. It began at the
close of the thirteenth century as Rue aux Vaches; cows passed there in
those days to and from the farmyards of the abbey St-Germain-des-Prés.
In the sixteenth century it was known, like Rue de Sèvres into which it
runs, as Rue de la Maladrerie, to become Rue des Jacobins Réformés,
finally Rue St-Pierre from the chapel built there, a name corrupted to
Saints-Pères. No. 2 l’hôtel de Tessé. No. 6 (1652) once the stables of
Marie-Thérèse de Savoie. No. 28 l’hôtel de Fleury (1768). The court of
No. 30 covers the site of an old Protestant graveyard. A few old houses
remain in Rue Perronet opening at No. 32, where once an abbey windmill
worked. No. 39 Hôpital de la Charité, an Order founded by Marie de’
Medici in 1602, its principal entrance Rue Jacob. Dislodged from their
original quarters in Rue de la Petite-Seine, where Rue Bonaparte now
runs, by Queen Margot, who wanted the site for the new palace she built
for herself on quitting l’hôtel de Sens, the nuns settled here about the
year 1608. At No. 40 we see medallions over the door, one of Charlotte
Corday, the other not, as sometimes said, that of Marat but a Moor’s
head. In the court we see other medallions and mouldings made chiefly
from the sculptures on the tomb of François I at St-Denis. The hôtel de
la Force, where dwelt Saint-Simon, once stood close here. That and other
ancient _hôtels_ were razed to make way for the boulevard St-Germain.
No. 49, the chapel of the “frères de la Charité” on the site of the
ancient chapel St-Pierre of which the crypt still remains, has been the
medical Academy since 1881. The square adjoining it is an old Protestant
burial-ground. Nos. 50-52 are ancient. No. 54 is the French Protestant
library, Cuvier and Guizot were among its presidents. No. 56 was built
in 1640 for la Maréchale de la Meilleraie. At No. 63 Châteaubriand lived
from 1811 to 1814.