On the north-east and the east of the Louvre lay the most unregenerate portion of Paris, a district as tortuous, narrow, and unhealthy as in the Middle Ages, yet the centre of Parisian commerce. Even to-day the visitor may wonder that such a district can exist in a capital city, when he ventures into the Rue Quincampoix, the Rue des Francs Bourgeois, and the other alleys which cut them at right angles. But at least this quarter has been cleared by the thorough reorganization of the Halles and by the construction of some large arteries, the Boulevard de Sébastopol, the Rue Rambuteau, the Rue Etienne Marcel, and the Rue de Turbigo. It is sufficient to glance at a map of Louis Philippe's Paris, such as Dulaure's, to see what a maze it was then. Save for the two narrow thoroughfares, the Rue Saint-Martin and the Rue Saint-Denis, going from north to south, it had hardly a single continuous street. A stroll in the region of the old church of Saint-Merri will show many of these streets in their original dimensions; there is the Rue des Lombards, for instance, where Balzac's Matifat presided over the wholesale drug market, and the Rue Aubry le Boucher, formerly the Rue des Cinq Diamants, where in the virtuous Anselme Popinot's shop the first measures were taken for the reconstruction of César Birotteau's shattered fortunes. The darkness and insalubrity of this quarter are specially commented on at the beginning of Balzac's "Une Double Famille," where he says that a pedestrian coming from the Marais quarter to the quays near the Hôtel de Ville by the Rue de l'Homme Armé and other streets--practically the route of the present Rue des Archives down to the Place Lobau--would think he was walking in underground cellars. This unsavoury network in the day of Bohemia continued right on to the quays, which have now been cleared by the construction of the Théâtre and Place du Châtelet, the Théâtre Sarah Bernhardt, the Place de l'Hôtel de Ville, and the Place Lobau with its barracks. But in Louis Philippe's reign the Rue de la Vieille Lanterne, where poor Gérard de Nerval was found hanged, occupied the site of the stage of the Théâtre Sarah Bernhardt, and instead of the Place Lobau the Rue de la Tixanderie and the Rue du Tourniquet-Saint-Jean forked at the back of the Hôtel de Ville. The house described in "Une Double Famille" stood in the Rue du Tourniquet-Saint-Jean, which was only five feet wide at its broadest and only cleaned when flooded by a shower. The inhabitants lit their lamps at five in June and never put them out in winter. [Illustration: Rue de la Tixeranderie]