[Illustration: QUAI DES GRANDS-AUGUSTINS] Quai des Grands-Augustins, the oldest of Paris quays, dates in part from the thirteenth century, and records the existence there of the monastery where in its heyday the great assemblies of the clergy were held, and the ecclesiastical archives kept from 1645 to 1792. The Salle des Archives was then given up to the making of _assignats_. In 1797 the convent was sold and razed to the ground. We see some traces of it at No. 55. The bookseller’s shop there was till recent years paved with gravestones from the convent chapel which stood on the site of No. 53. The restaurant Lapérouse at No. 51 was, in the seventeenth century, the hôtel of the comte de Bruillevert. The Académie bookseller, Didier-Perrin, is established in the ancient hôtel Feydeau et Montholon. No. 25 was built by François I. No. 23 opened on the vanished Rue de Hurepoix. No. 17 was part of the hôtel d’O, subsequently hôtel de Luynes. Quai St-Michel was known for a time in Napoléon’s day as Quai de la Gloriette. Its first stone was laid so far back as 1561, then no more stones added till 1767, an interim of two centuries. Another interruption deferred its completion to the year 1811. The two narrow sordid streets we see opening on to it, Rue Zacharie and Rue du Chat qui Pêche, date, the first from 1219, as in part Rue Sac-à-lie in part Rue des Trois-Chandeliers, from its earliest days a slum; the second, a mere alley, from 1540. Quai de Montebello began in 1554 as Quai des Bernardins from the vicinity of the convent--its walls still standing (_see_ p. 136). The quay bore several successive names till its entire reconstruction in early nineteenth-century years, when it was renamed in memory of Napoléon’s great General, Maréchal Lannes.