Behind the church is the old Rue des Barres with an ancient inscription and traces of an ancient chapel. The sordid but picturesque Rue de l’Hôtel de Ville was known for centuries as Rue de la Mortellerie, from the _morteliers_, or masons who had settled there. In the dread cholera year 1832 the inhabitants saw in the name of their street a sinister reference to the word _mort_ and demanded its change. Every house has some feature of old-time interest. Beneath No. 56 there is a Gothic cellar, once, tradition says, a chapel founded by Blanche de France, grand-daughter of Philippe-le-Bel, who died in 1358. At No. 39 we see the narrowest street in Paris, Rue du Paon Blanc, erewhile known as the “descente à la rivière.” Nos. 8-2 is the venerable hôtel de Sens (_see_ p. 117). In Rue Geoffroy l’Asnier, between Rue de l’Hôtel de Ville and Rue François-Miron, thirteenth century, we find among many other vestiges of old times the fine seventeenth-century door of hôtel Chalons at No. 26. In Rue de Jouy of the same period and interest, at No. 12 and No. 14, dependencies of l’hôtel Beauvais; at No. 7 l’hôtel d’Aumont, built in 1648 on the site of the house where Richelieu was born. At No. 9, the École Sophie-Germain, the ancient hôtel de Fourcy, previously inhabited by a rich bourgeois family. Rue des Archives (_see_ p. 74) is chiefly interesting in its course through this arrondissement for the old church des Billettes (_see_ p. 76) on the site of the house of the Jew Jonathas, so called from the sign hung outside a neighbouring house--_a billot_--i.e. log of wood. Rebuilt in 1745, closed at the Revolution, the church was given to the Protestants in 1808. The beautiful cloisters of the fifteenth-century structure were left untouched and are enclosed in the school adjoining the church. Rue Ste-Croix-de-la-Bretonnerie dates from the early years of the thirteenth century and is rich in relics of past ages. Its name records the existence there of the thirteenth-century church de l’Exaltation de la Ste-Croix and of a convent instituted in 1258 in the ancient Monnaie du Roi--the Mint--suppressed at the Revolution, but of which traces are still seen on the square. At No. 47 we see a turret dating from 1610. The dispensary at No. 44 is the old hôtel Feydeau de Brou (1760). No. 35 belonged to the old church Chapter. The boys’ school at No. 22 is ancient. No. 20 dates from 1696. Rue Aubriot from the thirteenth to the middle of the nineteenth century was Rue du Puits-au-Marais. Aubriot was the thirteenth-century Prévôt de Paris, an active builder, and who first laid drains beneath Paris streets. No. 10 dates from the first years of the seventeenth century. Vestiges of that or an earlier age are seen all along the street. Rue des Blancs-Manteaux recalls the begging Friars, servants of Mary, wearing long white cloaks, who settled here in 1258. They united a few years later with the Guillemites, whose name is recorded in a neighbouring street of ancient date.