The Rue Saint-André des Arts communicates with the Rue de l’École de Médecine by a short passage known as the Cour du Commerce, which is associated, on more than one point, with the French Revolution. In one of the old houses (now pulled down) on the side of the Rue de l’École de Médecine lived Danton. At the present No. 8 still existed, until two years ago, a reading-room which was established under the Reign of Terror by the widow of the Girondist Brissot, who, having inherited a large library from her husband, wished to turn it to profitable account. In the same house was the printing office of the _Ami du Peuple_, edited by Marat. The printing office was directed by Brune, who afterwards became a marshal of France, and died, like the atrocious journalist, by assassination. Another souvenir, again of a sanguinary kind, belongs to the Cour du Commerce. One of the appendages to the stunted houses in the middle of the passage is a shed, where the first experiments were made with the guillotine. “_Sic vos non vobis_” might, in Virgilian phrase, be said of the first victims. These were sheep, which were subjected to an almost painless death in the interest, not of themselves, while condemned to perish by the butcher’s knife, but of men and women. Some day, let us hope, animals also will be killed with the least possible accompaniment of suffering. CHAPTER XIX THE ODÉON: THE LUXEMBURG PALACE. The Odéon--Its History--Erection of the Present Building in 1799--Marie de Médicis and the Luxemburg Palace--The Judicial Annals of the Luxemburg--Trials of Fieschi and Louvel--Trial of Louis Napoleon--Trial of the Duc de Praslin. [Illustration: RUE DE L’ANCIENNE COMÉDIE.] [Illustration: RUE DE L’ODÉON.]