When one walks past the Porte St. Denis and looks up at that seventeenth-century arch of triumph, built to commemorate the German victories of Louis Quatorze, one just misses the historical significance and architectural fitness of the arch. It is not merely an incident in the boulevard. It belongs not so much to the newer boulevard, as to the ancient Rue St. Denis, and it is only by proceeding some distance up this street, the ancient route of the pilgrims to the tomb of the saint, that the meaning of the Porte St. Denis can truly be appreciated. The arch may be heavy,--it has been described as hideous, and it truly is,--but seen in the Rue St. Denis, whose roadway passes under it, it forms a typical view even to-day of Old Paris, and of the Paris which entered so largely into Dumas' romances of the Louis. The more ancient Porte St. Denis, the gateway which lay between the faubourg, the plain, and the ville, performed a function quite different from that of the Renaissance gateway which exists to-day; in just what manner will be readily inferred when it is recalled that, with the Porte St. Antoine, the Porte St. Denis was the scene of much riot and bloodshed in the early history of Paris. [Illustration: 109 RUE DU FAUBOURG ST. DENIS (DÉSCAMPS' STUDIO)] There are no tram-cars or omnibuses passing through its arch, as through the Place du Carrousel, or the courtyards of the Louvre, to take away the sentiment of romance; though the traffic which swirls and eddies around its sturdy piers and walls is of a manifest up-to-date, twentieth-century variety. Through its great arch runs the Rue du Faubourg St. Denis, where, at No. 109, was the studio of Gabriel Déscamps, celebrated in "Capitaine Pamphile." * * * * * In "Marguerite de Valois" we have a graphic reference--though rather more sentimental than was the author's wont--to the Cimetière des Innocents: "On the day which succeeded that terrible massacre of St. Bartholomew's night, in 1572, a hawthorn-tree," said Dumas, and it is also recognized history, as well, "which had blossomed in the spring, and which, according to custom, had lost its odorous flower in the month of June, had strangely reblossomed during the night, and the Catholics, who saw in this even a miracle, and who by rendering this miracle popular made the Deity their accomplice, went in procession, cross and banner at their head, to the Cemetery of the Innocents, where this hawthorn was blooming." Amidst the cries of "_Vive le roi!_" "_Vive la messe!_" "_Mort aux Huguenots_," the accomplished Marguerite herself went to witness the phenomenon. "When they reached the top of the Rue des Prouvelles, they met some men who were dragging a carcass without any head. It was that of 'the admiral' (Coligny).... The men were going to hang it by the feet at Montfaucon...."