Paris or the Society for the Preservation of Ancient Buildings bestirred itself to restore the few fragments of old Paris which yet remain. The Revolution did much damage, but often it only put the conventual buildings to secular uses without destroying them, leaving for later governments, and those moreover professedly religious, to utterly demolish the mutilated monasteries and churches, in order to make straight streets and spacious boulevards, which, beautiful as they are, do not prevent us from regretting the past. The convent of S. Geneviève was founded by Clovis, and so extensive were its lands and dependencies that ere long it drew to it a large population of workmen and labourers for the cultivation of its land. A priest, one of the monks of the abbey, was appointed to take spiritual charge of these people; and from this commencement grew the parish of S. Étienne. Originally the congregation met and worshipped in the crypt of the abbey church, which was dedicated to Our Lady; then the chapel was placed under the protection of S. John the Evangelist, and called St. Jean-du-Mont. But at the beginning of the 13th century the congregation outgrew its chapel, and in 1224 the Bishop of Paris authorised the building of a church by the side of the abbey, to be consecrated to the memory of S. Étienne, the proto-martyr. This first church, in fact, was only a part of the abbey; having had no separate entrance of its own, it could only be entered by a doorway from the choir of S. Geneviève. The reason for changing its name for the third time was probably the demolition of a church dedicated to S. Stephen to make space for Notre-Dame. The memory of the first of martyrs being dear to the citizens, nothing would be more appropriate than the naming of a new church to take the place of the old one, although upon a different site. The first mention of S. Étienne is in the History of Guillaume le Breton, in the year 1221.