So we come to la Place de l’Étoile, the high ground known in long-gone times as “la Montagne du Roule.” Till far into the eighteenth century it was without the city bounds and beyond the Avenue des Champs-Élysées which ended at Rue de Chaillot, a tree-studded, unlevelled, grass-grown octagonal stretch of land. Then it was made round and even, and became a favourite and fashionable promenade, known as l’Étoile de Chaillot, or the Rond-Point de Neuilly. The site had long been marked out for the erection of an important monument when Napoléon decreed the construction there of the Arc de Triomphe. The first stone of the arch was laid by Chalgrin in 1806, the Emperor and his new wife, on their wedding-day passed beneath a temporary Arc de Triomphe made of cloth, as the stone structure was not yet finished. Of the statuary which decorate the arch, the most noted group is the Départ, by Rude. The frieze shows the going forth to battle and the return of Napoléon’s armies, with the names of his generals engraved beneath.[F] CHAPTER XXXII FAUBOURG ST-HONORÉ Turning down Avenue Wagram, one of the twelve broad avenues, all modern, branching from the Place de l’Étoile, we come to the Faubourg St-Honoré, originally Chaussée du Roule. The village of Le Roule was famed in the thirteenth century for its goose-market. The district became a faubourg in 1722 and in 1787 was taken within the city bounds. It has always been a favourite quarter among men of intellectual activity desiring to live beyond the turbulence of the centre of Paris. Here and there we come upon vestiges of bygone days. No. 222 is an old Dominican convent disaffected in 1906. A foundry once stood at the corner of the Rue Balzac, where public statues of kings and other royalties of old were in turn cast or melted down. The house where Balzac died once stood close there too, up against an ancient chapel--all long swept away. The walled garden remains--bordering the street to which the name of the great novelist has been given--a slab put up where we see, just above the wall, the top of a pillared summer-house, which Balzac is said to have built. The hospital Beaujon dates from 1784 but has no architectural or historical interest. The few ancient houses we see at intervals in this upper part of the faubourg are remains of the village du Roule. Several of more interesting aspect were razed a few years ago. The military hospital was once the site of royal stables. Mme de Genlis died at No. 170. The church St-Philippe du Roule was built by Chalgrin in 1774 on the site of the seventeenth-century hôtel du Bas-Roule. No. 107 was the habitation of the King’s Pages under Louis XV. On the site of No. 81 comte de Fersan had his stables in the time of Louis XVI. The Home Office (Ministère de l’Intérieur) on Place Beauvau dates from the eighteenth century and has been a private mansion, a municipal _hôtel_, a hotel in the English sense of the word.