Rue Broca, in the vicinity of St-Médard, dating from the twelfth century, when it was Rue de Lourcine, has many curious old houses. The houses of Rue du Pôt-de-fer are all ancient, as are most of those in Rue St-Médard. At No. 1 of Place de la Contre Scarpe close by, a modern _place_, an inscription marks the site of the Cabaret de la “Pomme de Pin,” celebrated by the eulogies of Ronsard and Rabelais. CHAPTER XIX RUE ST-JACQUES Passing amid the ancient colleges and churches, streets and houses we have been visiting, runs the old Rue St-Jacques. It begins at the banks of the Seine, stretches through the whole arrondissement, to become on leaving it a faubourg. The line it follows was in a long-past age the Roman road from Lutetia to Orléans--the Via Superior--_la grande rue_--of early Paris history. Along its course in Roman times the Aqueduc d’Arcueil brought water from Rungis to the Palace of the Thermes (_see_ p. 138). It is from end to end a long line of old-time buildings or vestiges of those swept away. The famous couvent des Jacobins extended across the site of the Bibliothèque de l’École de Droit and adjacent structures. At No. 172 stood the Porte St-Jacques in Philippe-Auguste’s great wall. We see a fine old door at No. 5, a house with two-storied cellars. At a house on the site of No. 218 Jean de Meung wrote the _Roman de la Rose_. The famous poem was published lower down in the same street. The church St-Jacques-du-Haut-Pas stands on the high ground we reach at No. 252, a seventeenth-century structure on the site of a chapel built in the fourteenth century by the monks from Italy known as the _Pontifici_, makers of bridges constructed to give pilgrims the means of crossing a _mau pas_ or _mauvais pas_, i.e. a dangerous or difficult passage in rivers or roads. The beautiful woodwork within the church--that of the organ and pulpit--was brought here from the ancient, demolished church St-Benoît (_see_ p. 140). We notice several good pictures. The fine stained glass once here was all smashed at the Revolution. The hôpital Cochin memorizes in the name of its founder an eighteenth-century vicar there. The churchyard was where Rue de l’Abbé-de-l’Épée now runs, known at one time as Ruelle du Cimetière-St-Jacques.