An important addition to the Paris of Louis XIII’s time was the construction of what is now called the Île Saint Louis to the east of the Cité. This island was made by uniting two small islands, one of which had belonged to the bishop and the other to the canons of the cathedral. With bustling Paris only the cast of a stone away on each bank these two islets were devoted to such rural uses as the pasturage of cows and the whitening of linen. One of them, however, in Charles V’s time, had been the scene of a strange combat between a man and a dog, the property of his enemy whom he was accused of murdering from the fact that the dog attacked him whenever they met. Lists were enclosed on the then barren island and the king and a great crowd of men from court and town stood about to see the outcome of the “ordeal.” The man was allowed a stick; the dog had a barrel open at both ends into which he might retreat and from which he could plunge forth. When he was loosed he rushed about his enemy, evading his blows, threatening him now on one side and now on another until he was worn out, and then flew at his throat and threw him down so that he was forced to make confession of his crime thus proven by the “wager of battle.” Henry IV built a chapel which became in the eighteenth century the present church of Saint Louis-in-the-Island, whose delicately pierced spire shows glints of sky through its openings. The first union with the main land was by a [Illustration: PALACE OF THE LUXEMBOURG.] [Illustration: COURT OF HONOR OF NATIONAL LIBRARY. See page 272.] bridge to the right bank. An engineer named Marie conceived the idea of joining the two islets, and now the island is a unit and only the name of a street indicates where the Seine once flowed between. Once begun, this new residence section rapidly became popular among people who wanted to live somewhat remote from the turmoil of many streets. To-day the island is covered from tip to tip with dwellings and such few shops as are needed to supply the daily needs of the people, but there is still the atmosphere of remoteness that made its charm for Gautier and Baudelaire and Voltaire, and which induced Lambert de Thorigny, president of the Parliament, to build the superb mansion, still standing and restored to its original beauty, on whose decorations all the best French artists of the day lavished their skill. To cross one of the bridges on to the island is to find one’s self transported to one of the provinces. It is as true to-day as when it was written a hundred and thirty years ago that “the dweller in the Marais is a stranger in the Isle.”