Old and New Paris: Its History, Its People, and Its Places, v. 2Edwards, H. Sutherland (Henry Sutherland)
History
Old and New Paris: Its History, Its People, and Its Places, v. 2
Edwards, H. Sutherland (Henry Sutherland)
Paris (France) -- Description and travel; Paris (France) -- History
The Faculty of Medicine has, year by year, attracted so many additional
students that at last the building, which dated from 1769, was found far
too small; and it was decided some fifteen years ago to construct new
wings, which now occupy all the space comprised between the Rue de
l’École de Médecine, the Boulevard Saint-Germain, and the Rue
Hautefeuille. The first stone of the new building was laid in 1878. To
the right of the School of Medicine, the Rue Hautefeuille attracts the
attention of the archæologist. The turrets of the middle ages and of the
Renaissance have become rare in Paris; but the street in question
possesses no less than six. The Rue Hautefeuille runs into the Place
Saint-André des Arts, formed in 1809 on the site of the church of
Saint-André des Arts, which was built in the thirteenth century on the
foundations of an ancient chapel dedicated to Saint-Andéol and sold as
national property in 1797, soon afterwards to be demolished. It was in
the church of Saint-André des Arts that François Marie Arouet was
baptised on the 22nd of November, 1694. The late M. Auguste Vitu, in his
large illustrated work on Paris, claims, in recording this event, to
have discovered the true interpretation of the anagrammatic process by
which the bearer of the name of Arouet is supposed to have changed it
into Voltaire. “Fs Voltaire” is, as M. Vitu points out, the exact
anagram of “Arouet fils.” But why trouble about the matter? Who, after
all, can tell us by what process the name of Poquelin, said to he
derived from a Scotch village named Pawkelin (whence came the
grandfather of the great comic dramatist) got converted into Molière?
[Illustration: HÔTEL DU CHEVAL BLANC.]
The Rue Saint-André des Arts leads to the meeting-point of the Rue de
l’Ancienne Comédie, the Rue Dauphine, and the Rue Mazarine. In
connection with the Rue Dauphine must be mentioned a little street that
runs out of it, the Rue Contrescarpe, where still exists the Restaurant
Magny, famous for its literary frequenters, including George Sand and
Saint-Beuve, who, with some others, founded the celebrated “Friday
dinner,” at which no one abstained from meat. No. 5 in this street, is
occupied by the Hôtel du Cheval Blanc, the celebrated inn which figures
in the “Roman Comique” of Scarron and the “Trois Mousquetaires” of
Dumas. Under the reign of Louis XIII. it seems to have been nothing more
than the stables, coachhouse, and servants’ hostelry attached to the
mansion of the Archbishop of Lyons.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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