Paris, From the Earliest Period to the Present Day; Volume 2Walton, William
History
Paris, From the Earliest Period to the Present Day; Volume 2
Walton, William
Paris (France) -- Description and travel; Paris (France) -- History
Five years later, another public-spirited citizen, Gilles de Froissez,
an iron-master, proposed to bring the water of the Seine to aid in the
great task of cleaning the city, and was instrumental in beginning this
good work. In 1605, still another, François Miron, paid out of his own
pocket for the facing with masonry of the égout de Ponceau from the Rue
Saint-Denis to the Rue Saint-Martin. Various other open sewers were
gradually transformed into covered ones, but under Louis XIV, while the
total length of the first was only two thousand three hundred and
fifty-three mètres, that of the latter, including the long _égout de
ceinture_, or stream of Ménilmontant, was eight thousand and thirty-six.
Marie de Médicis, having begun, in 1613, to plant the trees for the park
of her proposed palace on the site of the old Hôtel du Luxembourg, was
desirous of securing a supply of water for her fountains, and
arrangements were made to divide that which was to be brought from the
source at Rungis by the Aqueduct of Arcueil. The old one built by the
Romans in this locality--whence its name, _Arculi_--had fallen to ruins;
one Hugues Cosnier had engaged, the preceding year, to construct a new
one in three years, which should bring thirty inches of water to the
Faubourg Saint-Germain, eighteen for the palace and twelve for the
inhabitants. The work was carried out by Jacques Debrosse, between 1613
and 1624; and on his handsome, dressed-stone construction there was
erected another in rough stone, less high but twice as long, between
1868 and 1872.
[Illustration: THE PUMPS OF PONT NOTRE-DAME, FROM THE QUAI DE GESVRES,
AS THEY APPEARED IN 1861. THEY WERE DEMOLISHED IN 1866.
From a drawing by H. Toussaint, after a contemporary engraving.]
A detailed report has been preserved, setting forth the condition of the
streets of the capital, made by Anne de Beaulieu, Sieur de
Saint-Germain, to the king, in April, 1636. Everywhere, _ordures_,
_immondices_, _bouès_, and _eaux croupies et arrestées_, the latter
proceeding from the broken sewers; in the quartier Saint-Eustache, the
égouts were stopped up, as everywhere else, "which causes the aforesaid
waters to stagnate and to rise nearly to the church of Saint-Eustache
and to give forth such a stinking vapor, in consequence of the
carriages, carts, and horses which pass through the aforesaid waters,
which is capable of polluting the whole quarter, and the same rising and
stagnating of water is caused in the Rue du Bout du Monde as far as the
aforesaid Rue Montorgueil; and it is to be remarked that the stench of
the aforesaid waters is much more stinking and infectious in this
locality than in others, because of the butchers and pork-butchers who
have their slaughter-houses on the aforesaid _esgout_ (the égout of the
Rue Montmartre), and that the blood and the garbage and other matters
proceeding as much from the aforesaid slaughter-houses as from the
sweepings of the houses."
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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