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. CHAPTER LI THE QUAYS The quays of the Seine in its course through Paris are picturesque in the extreme and show at almost every step points of historic interest. That interest is strongest, the aspect of the quays most quaint and entrancing, where they pass through the heart of the city.