Rue Vaugirard, on which the chief entrance of both these palaces open, is the longest street in Paris and one of the oldest. It is, like many another long Paris street, made up of several thoroughfares once distinct. The first of these, Rue du Val-Girad, led from the village named from its chief landowner, an abbé of St-Germain-des-Prés, Gérard de Meul. In close proximity to the Palace is the Odéon, the Second Théâtre-Français, once the “Français” itself, built in 1782, on the site of the hôtel de Condé, burnt down in 1799, rebuilt by Chalgrin, reopened in 1808 as théâtre de l’Impératrice, badly burnt a few years later, restored as the théâtre Français, then again restored in 1875. The _place_ surrounding the theatre and the streets opening out of it are rich in historic and literary associations. No. 1, Café Voltaire, was a meeting-place of eighteenth-century men of letters of every class and type. At No. 2 lived Camille Desmoulins and his Lucile. There he was arrested. In Rue Rotrou, No. 4, now a well-known bookseller’s shop, was once the famous Café Tabourey. André Chenier lived in Rue Corneille. Rue Tournon was opened in 1540, across the site of a horse-market bearing the realistic name Pré-Crotté, on land belonging to the Chapter of St-Germain-des-Prés, and named after its abbé, Cardinal de Tournon. At No. 2, hôtel Chatillon (seventeenth century), Balzac passed three years, 1827-30. No. 4 dates from the days of Louis XIV as hôtel Jean de Palaiseau, later hôtel Montmorency. Lamartine lived here in 1848. At No. 5 lived and died the notorious _devineresse_ Mlle Lenormand, “sybille de l’Impératrice Joséphine.” Another prophetess, Mme Moreau, lived here in the time of Napoléon III. No. 7, hôtel du Sénat et des Nations, sheltered Gambetta for a time, also Alphonse Daudet. At No. 6, hôtel de Brancas (1540), inhabited in its early years by the duchesse de Montpensier, rebuilt under the Regency, we see a very fine staircase and frescoed boudoir. Pacha lived for some years at No. 13. No. 8 dates from 1713, on the site of a more recent _hôtel_. At No. 10, hôtel Concini, Louis XIII lived for a time to be near his mother, Marie de’ Medici, at the Luxembourg. St. François de Sales stayed here. It served as the hôtel des Ambassadeurs Extraordinaires (1630-1748), was sequestered at the Revolution; then became a barracks as it is to-day. At No. 19 the Scot, Admiral Jones, famous for his help in the American War of Independence, died in 1791; his bones were taken to America in 1905. No. 33, the well-known restaurant Foyot, was in old days hôtel de Tréville, where royalties sometimes dined incognito. At No. 19 we come to an old curiosity shop surmounted by a barber’s pole, and on the doorpost we read the words, with their delicate flavour of irony: “Ici Monsieur Tussieu barbier, Rase le Sénat, Accommode la Sorbonne, Frise l’Académie.”