Two parallel historic roads named of St. Martin and St. Denis cut northwards through the masses of habitations that crowd the northern bank of the Seine. The former was the great Roman street, leading to the provinces of the north: the latter, the Grande Chaussée de Monseigneur St. Denis, led to the shrine of the patron saint and martyr of Lutetia. Along this, the richest and finest street of mediæval Paris, the kings of France and Henry V. of England passed in solemn state to Notre Dame. Four gates, whose sites are known in each of these two streets, mark the successive stages of the growth of the city. In 1141 a sloping bank of sand (_grève_), a little to the east of the Rue St. Martin and facing the old port of the _Naut_ at St. Landry on the island of the Cité, was ceded by royal charter to the burgesses of Paris for a payment of seventy livres. "It is void of houses," says the charter, "and is called the _gravia_, and is situated where the old market-place (_vetus forum_) existed." This was the origin of the famous Place de Grève where throbbed the very heart of civic, commercial and industrial Paris. Here Etienne Marcel purchased for the Hôtel de Ville the Maison aux Piliers (House of the Pillars), a long, low building, whose upper floor was supported by columns. Here every revolutionary and democratic movement has been organised from the days of Marcel to those of the Communes of 1789--when the last Provost of the Merchants met his death--and of 1871, when Domenico da Cortona's fine Renaissance hotel was destroyed by fire. [Illustration: ST. GERVAIS.] The place of sand was much smaller in olden times, and from 1310, when Philip the Fair burned three heretics, to July 1830, when the last murderer was hung there, has soaked up the blood of many a famous enemy of State and Church and of innumerable notorious and obscure criminals. A permanent gibbet stood there and a market cross. Every St. John's eve--the church and cloister of St. Jean stood behind the Hôtel de Ville--a great bonfire was lighted in the Place de Grève, fireworks were let off, and a salvo of artillery celebrated the festival. When the relations between Crown and Commune were felicitous the king himself would take part in the _fête_ and fired the pile with a torch of white wax which was decorated with crimson velvet. A royal supper and ball in the Grande Salle concluded the revels. Not infrequently the ashes at the stake where a poor wretch had met his doom were scarcely cool before the joyous flames and fireworks of the Feu de St. Jean burst forth. The very day after the execution of the Count of Bouteville the people were dancing round the fires of St. John. The Place was often flooded by the Seine until the embankment was built in 1675. The present Hôtel de Ville, completed in 1882, is one of the finest modern edifices in Europe. [Illustration: PLACE DES VOSGES, MAISON DE VICTOR HUGO.]