LES BOULEVARDS EXTÉRIEURS
Starting at the ancient Barrière des Ternes, for some years past Place
des Ternes, we take our way through outer boulevards forming a wide
circle. Boulevard de Courcelles, dating from 1789, runs where quaint old
thoroughfares ran of yore. Boulevard des Batignolles was the site of the
barrières de Monceau. The Collège Chaptal, which we see there, was
founded in Rue Blanche in 1844. The busy Place de Clichy is on the site
of the ancient Clichy barrier, valiantly defended by the Garde Nationale
in 1814. The huge monument in its centre is modern (1869). On the line
of the boulevard de Clichy stretched in bygone days the barriers
Blanche, Montmartre and des Martyrs, of which at first three boulevards
were formed: Clichy, Pigalle, des Martyrs united under the name of the
first in 1864. Just beyond the _place_, at No. 112, we turn into Avenue
Rachel leading to the cemetery Montmartre, formed in 1804 on the site of
the ancient graveyard of the district. Many men and women of mark lie
buried here. We see names of historic, literary or artistic celebrity on
the tombstones all around. The monument Cavaignac is the work of the
great sculptor Rude. The Moulin Rouge, a music-hall, at No. 88 is on the
site of a once famous Montmartrois dancing-hall, “la Dame Blanche.” No.
77 is an ancient convent, its garden the site of a café concert. “Les
Quatrez-Arts” at No. 64 is one of the most widely known of Montmartrois
cabarets and music-halls. In the Villa des Platanes, opening at No. 58,
we find a bas-relief showing the defence made on the _place_ in 1814.
Rue Fontaine, opening at No. 57, shows us a succession of small
Montmartrois theatres and music-halls. In Rue Fromentin we still see the
sign-board of the far-famed school of painting, l’Académie Julian
formerly here. In Rue Germain-Pilon we see an ancient pavilion. No. 36
is the Cabaret La Lune Rousse, formerly Cabaret des Arts, of a certain
renown or notoriety. The passage and the Rue de l’Élysée-des-Beaux-Arts
show us interesting sculptures and bas-reliefs. Nos. 8 and 6, of old a
dancing saloon, was the scene of a tragic incident in the year 1830: the
ground beneath it, undermined by quarries, gave way and an entire
wedding-party were engulfed. Boulevard de Rochechouart was named in
memory of a seventeenth-century abbess of Montmartre; it was in part of
its length boulevard des Poissoniers until the second half of the
nineteenth century. The music-hall “la Cigale,” at No. 120, dating from
1822, was for long the famous “bal de la Boule-Noire.” At No. 106 we see
a fresco on the bath house walls; an ancient house “Aux-deux-Marronniers”
at No. 38, and theatres, music-halls, etc., of marked local colour all
along the boulevard.
Boulevard de la Chapelle runs along the line of the ancient boulevard
des Vertus. Vestiges dating from the days of the struggles between
Armagnacs and Bourguignons are still seen at No. 120, and at No. 39 of
the short Rue Château-Landon, opening out of the boulevard at No. 1, we
see the door of an ancient castel which was for long the country house
of the monks of St-Lazare.
Boulevard Richard-Lenoir shows us nothing of special interest. The house
No. 140 is ancient.
[Illustration: OLD WELL AT SALPÉTRIÈRE
(Le puits de Manon Lescaut)]
Boulevard de l’Hôpital dates from 1760. The hospital referred to is the
immense Salpétrière built as a refuge for beggars by Louis XIV on the
site where his predecessor had built a powder stores. A bit of the old
arsenal still stands and serves as a wash-house. The domed church was
erected a few years later; barrels collected from surrounding farms were
sawed up to make its ceiling. Presently a woman’s prison was built
within the grounds--the prison we are shown in the Opera “Manon.” The
convulsionists of St-Médard were shut up there. At the Revolution it was
invaded by the insurgents, women of ill-fame set free, many of the
prisoners slain. The new Hôpital de la Pitié was built in adjoining
grounds in recent years. The central Magasin des Hôpitaux at No. 87,
where we see an ancient doorway, is on the site of the hospital
burial-ground of former days.
The fine old entrance portal of la Salpétrière, the statue of the famous
Dr. Charcot just outside it, the various seventeenth-century buildings,
the old woodwork within the hospital, the courtyard known as the Cour
des Massacres, the wide extending grounds, make a visit to this old
hospital very interesting. And the grass-grown open space before it,
with its shady trees, and the quaint streets around give a somewhat
rural and provincial aspect to this remote corner of Paris, making us
feel as if we were miles away from the city. Rue de Campo-Formio,
opening at No. 123, was known in the seventeenth century as Rue des
Étroites Ruelles. Rue Rubens was in past days Rue des Vignes.
Boulevard Auguste-Blanqui, in the eighteenth century in part of its
length boulevard des Gobelins, shows us at No. 17 the last
Fontaine-Marchande de Paris, now shut down. At No. 50 we see the little
chapel Ste-Rosalie, with inscriptions recording the names of several
victims of the fire which destroyed the bazar de la Charité in 1897. At
No. 68 we used to see an eighteenth-century house of rustic aspect and
pillared frontal, said to have served as a hunting-lodge for Napoléon
I. Subsequently it was used as the Paris hospital laundry. In more
recent times the great sculptor Rodin made the old house his studio and,
when forced to evacuate, took away the interesting old woodwork and the
statues of its façade.
Along boulevard St-Jacques (seventeenth century) we find several
tumbledown old houses.
Boulevard Raspail is entirely modern, cut across streets of bygone ages,
their houses of historic memory razed to make way for it. The recently
erected No. 117 stands on the site of an old house where Victor Hugo
dwelt and wrote for thirteen years and received the notable men of his
day. Beneath the tree we see in the wall at No. 112 the poet loved to
sit and read. Reaching the top of the boulevard we see the ancient
Jesuit chapel, between Rue de Sèvres and Rue du Cherche-Midi.
Boulevard Edgar-Quinet began as boulevard de Montrouge. Its chief point
of interest is the Montparnasse cemetery dating from 1826, with its
numerous tombs of notable persons. There we see, too, an ivy-covered
tower dating from the seventeenth century, known as la Tour-du-Moulin,
once the possession of a community of monks.
Boulevard de Vaugirard (eighteenth century) included in past days the
course of the modernized boulevard Pasteur. We see old houses at
intervals here and in the Rue du Château which led formerly to the
hunting-lodge of the duc de Maine. In Rue Dutot, leading out of
boulevard Pasteur, we come to the great Institut Pasteur, built in 1900,
with its wonderful laboratories, its perfect organization for its own
special, invaluable branches of chemical study. The tomb of its founder
is there, too, in a crypt built by his pupils, his disciples. Behind
the central building we see a hospital for animals. The Lycée Buffon at
No. 16 covers the site of the ancient Vaugirard cemetery. Boulevard
Garibaldi began in 1789 as boulevard de Meudon, towards which it ran--at
a long distance; then it took the name of Javel, its more immediate
quarter, then of Grenelle through which it stretched. Some of the older
houses along its course and in adjoining streets, as also along the
course and adjoining streets of the present boulevard de Grenelle, its
continuation, still stand, none of special interest. A famous barrier
wall was in bygone days along the line where we see the Metropolitian
railway. Up against its wall, just in front of the station Dupleix, many
political prisoners of mark were shot in the years between 1797 and
1815.
The boulevards des Invalides, de Montparnasse and de Port-Royal make one
long line. Boulevard des Invalides has its chief point of interest at
No. 33, the old hôtel Biron, later the convent of the Sacré-Cœur,
then Rodin’s studio, and Paris home--now in part the museum he
bequeathed to Paris (_see_ pp. 192, 194).
Boulevard Montparnasse, formed in 1760, shows us many fine
eighteenth-century _hôtels_ and some smaller structures of the same
period. On the site of No. 25, the _hôtel_ of the duc de Vendôme,
grandson of Henri IV, was the home of the children of Louis XIV by
Madame de Montespan.
[Illustration: CLOÎTRE DE L’ABBAYE DE PORT-ROYAL]
The Gare Montparnasse at No. 66 is a modern structure on the site of an
older railway station. Impasse Robiquet at No. 81 dates from the
fifteenth century. No. 87 is an old hunting-lodge, inhabited in more
modern days by Pierre Leroux, who was associated with George Sand in
founding the _Revue Indépendante_. Rue du Montparnasse, opening out of
the boulevard, is a seventeenth-century street cut across land
belonging in part to the church St-Laurent de Vaugirard, in part to the
Hôtel-Dieu. The church Notre-Dame-des-Champs is modern (1867-75). Rue
Stanislas, opening by the church at No. 91, was cut across the grounds
of the hôtel Terray, in the early years of the nineteenth century, where
the Collège Stanislas, named after Louis XVIII, was first instituted. At
No. 28 of the Rue Vavin, opening at No. 99, stood, till last year, the
ancient Pavillon de l’Horloge, a vestige of the old hôtel Traversière.
The short Rue de la Grande Chaumière, opened in 1830 as Rue Chamon,
memorizes by its present name a famous Latin quarter dancing-hall close
by. Here artists’ models gather for hire at midday each Monday. Rue de
Chevreuse, opening at No. 125, was a thoroughfare as early as the year
1210, bordering an hôtel de Chevreuse et Rohan-Guéménée. A famous
eighteenth-century _porcelaine_ factory stood close here.
Boulevard de Port-Royal: here at No. 119 we see the abbey built during
the first half of the seventeenth century. Hither came the good nuns of
Port-Royal-des-Champs in the valley of the Chevreuse, a convent founded
in the early years of the thirteenth century by Mathieu de Montmorency
and his wife Mathilde de Garlande and given to the Order of the
Bernardines. In the sixteenth century learned men desiring solitude
found it in that remote convent. Pascal made frequent sojourns there.
Quarrels between Jesuits and Jansenists brought about the destruction of
the convent of Port-Royal-des-Champs in 1710. The Paris Port-Royal went
on until 1790. Then the abbey became a prison, like so many other
important buildings, religious and secular; its name was changed to
Port-Libre, and numerous prisoners of note, Couthon among the rest, were
shut up there. In the year IV of the Convention, it became what it is on
a more complete scale to-day, a Maternity Hospital. Women-students sleep
in the ancient nuns’ cells. Most of the old abbey buildings are still
intact. The tombstone of the recluse, Arnauld of Andilly, which we see
in the sacristy, was found beneath the pavement some years ago. The
portal is modern. The _annexe_ of the hospital Cochin at No. 111 is an
ancient Capucine convent; its chapel serves as the hospital
lecture-room.
Rue Pierre-Nicole, opening out of the boulevard at No. 90, was cut in
modern days across the grounds of the ancient Carmelite convent
Val-de-Grâce. In the prolongation of the street we see some remains of
the convent. Here in ages long gone by was a Roman cemetery, where earth
burial as well as cremation was the rule. At No. 17 _bis_ of this
street we see the house once the oratory of Mademoiselle de la Vallière,
who as Sœur Louise de la Miséricorde passed the last thirty-six years
of her life in _pénitence_ here. The Marine barracks, Caserne Lourcine,
at No. 37 of the boulevard, are on the site of ancient barracks of the
Gardes Françaises, and record the former name of the Rue Broca, which we
look into here, a street of ancient dwellings. The hospital Broca, so
named after the famous doctor, was formed of part of the old convent of
the Cordelières, founded in 1259 by Margaret de Provence, wife of Louis
XI. The convent was pillaged in the sixteenth century by the Béarnais
troops, sequestrated and sold in Revolution days, to become in 1836
Hôpital Lourcine and in 1892 Broca.
[Illustration: REMAINS OF THE CONVENT DES CAPUCINES]
The two great latter-day Paris boulevards are boulevard Haussmann and
boulevard Malesherbes. The first, planned and partially built by the
Préfet de la Seine whose name it bears, running through the 8th
arrondissement and into the 9th, begun in 1857, is wholly modern save
for one single house, No. 173, at the juncture of Rue du Faubourg
St-Honoré, dating from the eighteenth century; boulevard Malesherbes
dates from about the same period. Joining this boulevard at No. 11 is
Avenue Velasquez, where, at No. 7, we find the hôtel Cernuschi
bequeathed by its owner to Paris as an Oriental Museum. The handsome
church St-Augustin is of recent erection. Besides these stately
boulevards and some few others devoid of historic interest, there are
boulevards encircling Paris on every side, along the boundary-lines of
the city, with at intervals the city gates. The boulevards in the
vicinity of the Bois de Boulogne are studded with villas and mansions,
many of them very luxurious. There are modern mansions, modern dwellings
of various categories along the course of all the other boulevards of
this wide circumference bordering the fortifications, but with few
associations of the least historic interest, beyond that of their
nomenclature memorizing, in many instances, Napoléon’s greatest
generals.
Boulevard de la Villette is formed of several ancient boulevards, and
the name records the existence there in past days of the “_petite
ville_,” a series of small buildings, dependencies of the leper-house
St-Lazare, first erected on a site known in the twelfth century as the
district of Rouvray. The black-walled Rotonde we see was the Custom
House first built in 1789, burnt down in 1871, and rebuilt on the old
plan. The Meaux barrier was there, bounding the highway to the north, a
point of great military interest. Louis XVI returned this way to Paris
after the flight to Varennes. The Imperial Guard passed here in triumph
in 1807, after their successful campaigns in Germany. Louis XVIII came
through the barrier gate here in 1814. The inn where the armistice was
signed in 1814 was on the Rond-Point opposite the barrier. At No. 130 of
the boulevard we come to Place du Combat, a name referring to no
military struggle, but to bull-fights, perhaps to cock-fights, which
took place here till into the nineteenth century. Close by is the site
of the great city gallows, the gibet de Maufaucon of bygone days (_see_
p. 240). And here in its vicinity, in the little Rue Vicq d’Azir, dating
from the early years of last century, died the former Paris public
executioner Deibler in 1904.
On the opposite side of Paris, in the boulevard Kellermann, the Porte de
Bicêtre recalls the English occupation of long-past ages or may be an
English colonization of later date, for Bicêtre is a corruption of the
name Winchester. These boulevards of the 13th arrondissement are
ragman’s quarters, the district of the Paris _chiffonniers_. Here at the
poterne des Peupliers the Bièvre enters Paris to be entirely lost to
view nowadays in its course through the city beneath the pavements.
The boulevards in the vicinity of Père Lachaise, Belleville,
Ménilmontant, Charonne, date from 1789. The short Rue des Panoyaux,
opening out of the boulevard Ménilmontant is said to owe its name to the
days when vines grew here, one bearing a seedless grape: “_pas
noyau_”--no kernel. Mention of the village of Charonne is found in
documents dating from the first years of the eleventh century. The
territory was church land, for the most part, owned by the old abbey
St-Magliore and the Paris Cathedral.