name of Sully given to the bridge and the street reminds us that the statesman lived at the Arsenal. There Mme de Brinvilliers was tried and condemned to death. The Arsenal was done away with by Louis XVI, streets cut across the site of most of its demolished walls. What remained became the library we see; it has counted among its librarians men of special distinction: Nodier, Hérédia, etc., and is now under the direction of the well-known man of letters Funck-Brentano. Various relics of past days and of old-time inhabitants are to be seen there and traces of the boundary wall of Charles V. Rue de la Cerisaie, hard by, is another street recalling the palace gardens--for cherry-trees then grew here. On the site of No. 10 Gabrielle d’Estrées was seized with her last illness while at the supper-table of its owner, the friend of her loyal lover. The houses here are all ancient and characteristic, as are also those in Rue Lesdiguières where till the first years of this present century the wall of a dependency of the Bastille still stood. CHAPTER XIII LA PLACE DES VOSGES Here we are on the old Place Royale--the _place_ where royalties dwelt and courtiers disported in the days of Louis XIII, whose statue we see still in the centre of the big, dreary garden square. That statue was put there by Napoléon to replace the original one, carted away and melted down in Revolutionary days when the _ci-devant_ Place Royale became Place des Fédérés, then Place de l’Indivisibilité. Napoléon first named it Place des Vosges, a name confirmed after 1870 as a tribute of gratitude to the department which had first paid up its share of the war contribution. In the early centuries of the Bourbon kings the palace of the Tournelles had stood here (see p. 8). After its demolition the site was taken for a horse market, and there the famous duel was fought between the _mignons_ of Henri II and the followers of the duc de Guise. Henri IV created the Place and had it parcelled out for building purposes. His idea was to make it the centre of a number of streets or avenues each bearing the name of one of the provinces of France. The King died and that project was not carried out, but the extensive site was soon the square of the fine mansions we see to-day, mansions fallen from their high estate, no longer the private abodes of the world of fashion, but standing unchanged in outward aspect.