The Rohan courtyard (the word ought to be written _Rouen_, for, in the fifteenth century, the yard depended on the old mansion possessed by the Cardinal de Rouen) joins the Passage du Commerce, a few steps from the bookshop where the philanthropic Doctor Guillotin tried on a sheep the knife of his "beheading machine"; it is picturesque and curious, this Rohan courtyard, where you can still see the well of the house once inhabited by Coictier, the doctor of Louis XI.; where, too, the "mule's step" may be found, that Sorbonne doctors, who frequented this quarter, used in order to get off their steeds, and which preserved a very old wall round a garden planted with lilac and turf--alas! destroyed last year. The wall, like that of the Rue Clovis, was a fragment of Philippe-Auguste's fortification, the base of one of whose towers is still to be made out in the Passage du Commerce, No. 4, at the house of a locksmith, who has set up his forge upon it! [Illustration: THE ROHAN COURTYARD IN 1901 Second view] The houses there are old, dilapidated, and sordid, but perfect in their picturesqueness; the strangest industries flourish in them, and quite recently one might read there this characteristically Parisian advertisement, "Small hands required for flowers and feathers," beside a plate pointing out the address of the newspaper, _Heaven_, on the fourth floor, door to the left! The Rue de l'Ancienne Comédie is on one side; it is the ancient Rue des Fossés-Saint-Germain, where Marat set up his press and printing-machine in a cellar. At No. 14, in the courtyard of an old mansion occupied by a wall-paper merchant, once stood the premises of the Théâtre-Français. The large entrance door, the staircases leading to the actors' private rooms, the slanting pit of the hall, and even the friezes are still in existence. The King's Comedians played there, on April 18th, 1689, _Phèdre_ and the _Médecin malgré lui_, and performed in the same building until 1770. The encyclopædists, d'Alembert, Diderot and his friends, used to meet opposite at the Procope coffee-house, the handsome iron balcony of which is yet subsisting, from where it was so agreeable to hobnob with the balcony of the Comedy. The Procope coffee-house, celebrated in the eighteenth century, was even more so under the Second Empire. In 1867, on the eve of the Baudin trial, Gambetta poured forth in it, to the students of the various University schools, the thunder and lightning bursts of his admirable eloquence. The great orator in 1859 lived at No. 7 Rue de Tournon, in the hotel of the Senate and the Nations, at present to be found there. His small room afforded a fine view over the roofs of Paris, and also remains as it was then.