The Best of the World's Classics, Restricted to Prose, Vol. VII (of X)—Continental Europe I
History
The Best of the World's Classics, Restricted to Prose, Vol. VII (of X)—Continental Europe I
Authors -- Biography; Literature -- Collections
The enclosure of Charles V consequently shared the same fate as that
of Philip Augustus. So early as the conclusion of the fifteenth
century it was overtaken, passed, and the suburbs kept traveling
onward. In the sixteenth it seemed very visibly receding more and more
into the ancient city, so rapidly did the new town thicken on the
other side of it. Thus, so far back as the fifteenth century, to come
down no further, Paris had already worn out the three concentric
circles of walls which, from the time of Julian the Apostate, lay in
embryo, if I may be allowed the expression, in the Grand and Petit
Chatelets. The mighty city had successively burst its four mural
belts, like a growing boy bursting the garments made for him a year
ago. Under Louis XI there were still to be seen ruined towers of the
ancient enclosures, rising at intervals above the sea of houses, like
the tops of hills from amid an inundation, like the archipelagos of
old Paris submerged beneath the new....
Each of these great divisions of Paris was, as we have observed, a
city, but a city too special to be complete, a city which could not do
without the two others. Thus they had three totally different aspects.
The City, properly so called, abounded in churches; the Ville
contained the palaces; and the University, the colleges. Setting aside
secondary jurisdictions, we may assume generally that the island was
under the bishop, the right bank under the provost of the merchants,
the left under the rector of the University, and the whole under the
provost of Paris, a royal and not a municipal officer. The City had
the Cathedral of Notre Dame, the Ville the Louvre and the Hotel de
Ville, and the University the Sorbonne. The Ville contained the
Halles, the City the Hotel Dieu, and the University the Pré aux
Clercs. For offenses committed by the students on the left bank, in
their Pré aux Clercs, they were tried at the Palace of Justice in the
island, and punished on the right bank at Montfaucon, unless the
rector, finding the University strong and the king weak, chose to
interfere; for it was a privilege of the scholars to be hung in their
own quarter.
Most of these privileges, be it remarked by the way, and some of them
were more valuable than that just mentioned, had been extorted from
different sovereigns by riots and insurrections. This is the
invariable course--the king never grants any boon but what is wrung
from him by the people.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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