Rue du Faubourg Poissonière, its odd numbers in the 9th its even ones in the 10th arrondissement, shows us many interesting old houses and we find quaint old streets leading out of it. It dates as a thoroughfare from the middle of the seventeenth century, named then Chaussée de la Nouvelle France. Later it was Rue Ste-Anne, from an ancient chapel in the vicinity, yielding finally in the matter of name to the all-important fish-market to which it led--the poissonnerie des Halles. In the court at No. 2 we find a Pavillon Louis XVI. The crimson walls of the _Matin_ office was in past days the private _hôtel_ where colonel de la Bedoyère was arrested (1815). We see interesting old houses at Nos. 9-13. No. 15, in old days hôtel des Menus Plaisirs du Roi, was with two adjoining houses taken at the end of the eighteenth century for the Conservatoire de Musique, an institution founded (1784) by the marquis de Breteuil, as the École Royale de Chant et de Déclamation, with the special aim of training _artistes_ for the court theatre. Closed at the Revolution, it was reopened in calmer days and, under the direction of Cherubini, became world-famed. Ambroise Thomas died there in 1895. In 1911 the Conservatoire was moved away to modern quarters in Rue de Madrid and the old building razed. The balcony on the garden side at No. 19, an eighteenth-century house with many interesting vestiges, is formed of a fifteenth-century gravestone. Cherubini lived at No. 25. The church St-Eugène which we see in Rue Cecile, its interior entirely of cast iron, was so named by Napoléon III’s express wish as a souvenir of his wedding. The fine _hôtel_ at No. 30 was the home of Marshal Ney. Nos. 32, 42, 42 _bis_, 52 and 56 where Corot died in 1875, the little vaulted Rue Ambroise-Thomas, opening at No. 57, the fine house at No. 58, and Nos. 65 and 80, all show us characteristic old-time features. At No. 82 we see an infantry barracks, once known as la Nouvelle France, a Caserne des Gardes Françaises. Its canteen is said to be the old bedroom of “sergeant Bernadotte,” destined to become King of Sweden. Here Hoche, too, was sergeant. The bathing establishment of Rue de Montholon, opening out of the faubourg at No. 89, was the home of Méhul, author of _le Chant du Départ_; he died here in 1817. The street records the family name of the General who went with Napoléon to St. Helena. Another abbess of Montmartre is memorized by Rue Bellefond, a seventeenth-century street opening at No. 107. The first Paris gasworks was set up on the site of No. 129. At No. 138 we see a wooden house, in Gothic style, beautifully made, owned and lived in by a carpenter who plies his trade there. Avenue Trudaine is modern (1821), named in memory of a Prévôt des Marchands of the seventeenth and early years of the eighteenth century. The Collège Rollin, at No. 12, is on the site of the ancient Montmartre slaughterhouses. The painter Alfred Stevens died at No. 17 in 1906. CHAPTER XXXVII