IN THE PARIS “EAST END”
We are now in the vicinity of the largest and most important of the
Paris cemeteries--Père Lachaise. But it lies in the 20th arrondissement.
The streets of this 10th arrondissement leading east approach its
boundary walls--its gates. Rue de la Roquette comes to it from the
vicinity of the Bastille. La Roquette was a country house built in the
sixteenth century, a favourite resort of the princes of the Valois line.
Then, towards the end of the seventeenth century, the house was given
over to the nuns Hospitalières of Place-Royale. The convent, suppressed
at the Revolution, became State property and in 1837 was used as the
prison for criminals condemned to death. The guillotine was set up on
the five stones we see at the entrance to Rue Croix-Faubin. The
prisoners called the spot l’Abbaye des Cinq Pierres. It was there that
Monseigneur Darboy and abbé Deguerry were put to death in 1871. On the
day following fifty-two prisoners, chiefly monks and Paris Guards, were
led from that prison to the heights of Belleville and shot in Rue Haxo.
Read _à ce propos_ Coppée’s striking drama _Le Pater_. La Roquette is
now a prison for youthful offenders, a sort of House of Correction.
Lower down the street we find here and there an ancient house or an old
sign. The fountain at No. 70 is modern (1846). The curious old Cour du
Cantal at No. 22 is inhabited mostly by Auvergnats. Rue de Charonne,
another street stretching through the whole length of the
arrondissement, in olden days the Charonne road, starts from the Rue du
Faubourg St-Antoine, where at No. 1 we see a fountain dating from 1710.
Along its whole length we find vestiges of bygone times. It is a
district of ironmongers and workers in iron and workman’s tools. A
district, too, of popular dancing saloons. At No. 51 we see l’hôtel de
Mortagne, built in 1711, where Vaucanson first exhibited his collection
of mechanical instruments. Bequeathed to the State, that collection was
the nucleus of the Conservatoire des Arts et Métiers: Arts and Crafts
Institution (_see_ p. 64). Here the great mechanic died in 1782. No. 97,
once a Benedictine convent, was subsequently a private mansion, then a
factory, then in part a Protestant chapel. The École Maternelle at No.
99 was in past days a priory of “Bon Secours” (seventeenth century). No.
98 is on the site of a convent razed in 1906. There are remains of
another convent at Nos. 100, 102. No. 161 was the famous “Maison de
Santé,” owned by Robespierre’s friend Dr. Belhomme, to which he added
the adjoining _hôtel_ of the marquis de Chabanais. There, during the
Terror, he received prisoners as “paying guests.” His prices were
enormous and on a rising scale ... the guests who could not pay at the
required rate were turned adrift on the road to the guillotine. These
walls sheltered the duchesse d’Orléans, the mother of Louis-Philippe,
protected by her faithful friend known as comte de Folmon, in reality
the deputé Rouzet, and many other notable persons of those troubled
years. On the left side of the door we see the figures 1726, relic of an
ancient system of numbering. The Flemish church de la Sainte Famille at
181 is modern (1862).
Crossing Rue de Charonne in its earlier course, we come upon the
sixteenth-century Rue Basfroi, a corruption of _beffroi_, referring to
the belfry of the ancient church Ste-Marguerite in Rue St-Bernard.
Ste-Marguerite, founded in 1624 as a convent chapel, rebuilt almost
entirely in 1712, enlarged later, is interesting as the burial-place of
the Dauphin, or his substitute, in 1745, and as possessing a much-prized
relic, the body of St. Ovide, in whose honour the great annual fair was
held on Place Vendôme. A tiny cross up against the church wall marks the
grave where the son of Louis XVI was supposed to have been laid, but
where on exhumation some years ago the bones of an older boy were found.
We see some other ancient tombs up against the walls of what remains of
that old churchyard, and on the wall of the apse of the church two very
remarkable bas-reliefs, the work of an old-time abbé, M. Goy, a clever
sculptor, to whom are due also many of the statues in the park at
Versailles. Within the church we see several striking statues and a
remarkable “Chapelle des Morts,” its walls entirely frescoed in
_grisaille_ but in great need of restoration. From the end of Rue
Chancy, where at No. 22 we see an old carved wood balcony, we get an
interesting view of this historic old church.
Rue de Montreuil, leading to the village of the name, shows us many old
houses, one at No. 52 with statuettes and in the courtyard an ancient
well, and at No. 31, remains of the Folie Titon, within its walls a fine
staircase and ceiling, the latter damaged of late owing to a fire.