THE NEIGHBOURHOOD OF PORT-ROYAL
ARRONDISSEMENT XIV. (OBSERVATOIRE)
The boundary-line between arrondissements XIII and XIV is Rue de la
Santé, the name of the great Paris prison which stands there. It brings
us to the vicinity of the Paris Observatory and of the Hôpital Cochin.
The prison is a modern structure on a site known as la Charbonnerie,
because of coal-mines once there. The Observatory, built over ancient
quarries, was founded by Louis XIV’s minister Colbert, in 1667. A spiral
staircase of six hundred steps leads down to the cellars that erewhile
were mines. It was enlarged in 1730 and again in 1810, and the cupolas
were added at a later date. A stretch of Rue du Faubourg St-Jacques
borders its eastern side, and there on the opposite side we see
l’Hôpital Cochin, founded in 1780 by the then vicar of
St-Jacques-du-Haut-Pas, whose name it bears--enlarged in recent years.
At No. 34 of Rue du Faubourg St-Jacques we turn into the
seventeenth-century Rue Cassini, so named in 1790 to memorize the
seventeenth-century organizer of the Observatory. Here Balzac lived in
1829 in a house no longer standing. The great painter J. P. Laurens has
an _hôtel_ here. We find a Louis XVI monument in a court at No. 10.
Subterranean passages, made and used in a past age by smugglers, have
been discovered beneath the pavement of this old street.
Rue Denfert-Rochereau has its first numbers in arrondissement V. This
was the “Via Infera,” the Lower Road of the Romans. The name _Enfer_,
given later, is said to refer, not to the place of torment, but to the
hellish noise persistently made in a _hôtel_ there built by a son of
Hugues Capet, the hôtel Vauvert, hence the French expression, “envoyer
les gens au diable vert”--_vert_ shortened from _Vauvert_, i.e. send
them off--far away--to the devil! _Enfer_ became _d’Enfert_, to which in
1878 was added the name of the general who defended Belfort in 1870: not
exactly a happy combination! Many persons of note have dwelt in this old
street. No. 25 (arrondissement V) is an ancient Carmelite convent,
built, tradition says, on the site of a pagan temple: an oratory-chapel
dedicated to St. Michael covered part of the site in early Christian
days and a public cemetery. An ancient crypt still exists. It was in the
convent here that Louise de la Vallière came to work till her death, in
1710. That first convent and church were razed in 1797. The Carmelites
built a smaller one on the ancient grounds in 1802, and rebuilt their
chapel in 1899. It did not serve them long. They were banished from
France in 1901. The chapel, crypt and some vestiges of the ancient
convent are before us here. Modern streets--Rue Val de Grâce opened in
1881, Rue Nicole in 1864--run where the rest of the vast convent walls
once rose. No. 57 is on the site of an ancient Roman burial-ground of
which important traces were found in 1896. No. 68, ancient convent of
the Visitation. No. 72 built in 1650 as an Oratorian convent, a
maternity hospital under the Empire, now a children’s hospice. No. 71,
couvent du Bon Pasteur--House of Mercy--founded in the time of Louis
XVI, bought by the Paris Municipality in 1891, its chapel burnt by the
Communards in 1871, rebuilt by the authorities of the Charity, worked
now by Sisters of St. Thomas de Villeneuve. Within its walls we see
interesting old-time features and beneath are the walls of reservoirs
dating from the days when water was brought here from the heights of
Rungis. No. 75, ancient Eudiste convent and chapel; Châteaubriand once
dwelt at No. 88 and with his wife founded at No. 92 the Infirmerie
Marie-Thérèse, named after the duchesse d’Angoulême, daughter of Louis
XVI, a home for poverty-stricken gentlepeople, transformed subsequently
into an asylum for aged priests. Mme de Châteaubriand lies buried there
beneath the high altar of the chapel.
Avenue d’Orléans, in olden days Route Nationale de Paris à Orléans,
dating from the eighteenth century, and smaller streets connected with
it, show us many old houses, while in the Villa Adrienne, opening at No.
17, we find a number of modern houses--pavilions--each bearing the name
of a celebrity of past time. Rue de la Voie-Verte was so named from the
market-gardens erewhile stretching here. Rue de la Tombe-Issoire runs
across the site of an ancient burial-ground where was an immense tomb,
said to have been made for the body of a giant: Isore or Isïre, who,
according to the legend, attacked Paris at the head of a body of
Sarazins in the time of Charlemagne. Here and there along this street,
as in the short streets leading out of it, we come upon interesting
vestiges of the past, notably in Rue Hallé, opening at No. 42. The
pretty Parc Souris is quite modern. We find old houses in Avenue du
Chatillon, an eighteenth-century thoroughfare. Rue des Plantes leads us
to Place de Montrouge, in the thirteenth century the centre of a village
so named either after an old-time squire, lord of the manor, Guis de
Rouge, or because the soil is of red sandstone. The squire, maybe,
gained his surname from the soil on which he built his château, while
the village took its name from the squire. Rue Didot, once known as Rue
des Terriers-aux-Lapins, memorizes the great printing-house founded in
1713. Rue de Vanves, leading to what was in olden days the village of
the name, crosses Rue du Château at the point where in the eighteenth
century the duc de Maine had a hunting-lodge. In Avenue du Maine we see
ancient houses at intervals. Rue du Moulin-Vert recalls the existence of
one of the numerous windmills on the land around the city in former
days. Rue de la Gaité (eighteenth century) has ever been true to its
name or the name true to the locality--one of dancing saloons and other
popular amusements. The Cinema des Mille Colonnes was in pre-cinema days
the “Bal des Mille Colonnes,” opened in 1833. Passing on up Avenue du
Maine we come to arrondissement XV.