Paris (France) -- Description and travel; Paris (France) -- History
[Illustration: RUE ÉGINHARD]
Turning into Rue St-Paul we see at No. 35 the doorway of the demolished
hôtel de Sève. In the Passage St-Paul, till 1877 Passage St-Louis, we
find at No. 7 the _presbytère_, once, tradition says, a _pied-à-terre_
of the _grand_ Condé, and at No. 38 an old courtyard. At No. 36 vestiges
of the prison originally part of the convent founded by St. Éloi in the
time of Dagobert.[C] The arched Passage St-Pierre which led in olden
days to the cemetery St-Pol, the burial-place of so many notable
persons: Rabelais, Mansart, etc., and of prisoners from the Bastille,
the man in the iron mask among them, has lately been swept away, with
some walls of the old convent close up against it. The Manège till
recent days at No. 30 was in days past a favourite meeting place of the
people when in disaccord with the authorities in politics or on
industrial questions. At No. 31 we look into Rue Éginhard, the Ruelle
St-Pol of the fourteenth century; the walls of some of its houses once
formed part of the old church St-Pol. At No. 8 we see the square turret
of an old-hôtel St-Maur. At No. 4, l’hôtel de Vieuville, an interesting
fifteenth-and sixteenth-century building, condemned to demolition, which
has been inhabited by notable personages of successive periods. Passing
through the black-walled court we mount a fine old-time staircase to
find halls with beautiful mouldings, a wonderful frescoed ceiling, etc.
etc., all in the possession at present of a well-known antiquarian. No.
5, doorway of l’hôtel de Lignerac. In Rue Ave-Maria, its site covered in
past days by two old convents, we see at No. 15 an _hôtel_ where was
once the tennis-court of the Croix-Noire, in its day the “Illustre
Théâtre” with Molière as its chief and whence the great tragedian was
led for debt to durance vile at the Châtelet. No. 2 was once “la
Boucherie Ave-Maria.”
Rue Charlemagne was known by various names till this last one given in
1844--one of its old names, Rue des Prêtres, is still seen engraved in
the wall at No. 7. The _petit_ Lycée Charlemagne has among its walls
part of one of the ancient towers of the boundary wall of
Philippe-Auguste which passed in a straight line to the Seine at this
point. It is known as Tour Montgomery and shelters a ... gas meter! The
remains of another tower are seen behind the gymnasium. Before 1908 the
last remaining walls of the hôtel du Prévôt still stood in Passage
Charlemagne, a picturesque turreted Renaissance bit of “Old Paris” let
out in tenements, the last vestiges of the historic mansion where many
notable persons, royal and other, had sojourned. Interesting old-time
features are seen at Nos. 18, 21, 22, 25; No. 25 underwent restoration
in recent years.
[Illustration: RUE DU PRÉVÔT]
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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