THE boundary-line between arrondissements XIII and XIV is Rue de la SantÉ, the name of the great Paris prison which stands there. It brings us to the vicinity of the Paris Observatory and of the HÔpital Cochin. The prison is a modern structure on a site known as la Charbonnerie, because of coal-mines once there. The Observatory, built over ancient quarries, was founded by Louis XIV’s minister Colbert, in 1667. A spiral staircase of six hundred steps leads down to the cellars that erewhile were mines. It was enlarged in 1730 and again in 1810, and the cupolas were added at a later date. A stretch of Rue du Faubourg St-Jacques borders its eastern side, and there on the opposite side we see l’HÔpital Cochin, founded in 1780 by the then vicar of St-Jacques-du-Haut-Pas, whose name it bears—enlarged in recent years. At No. 34 of Rue du Faubourg St-Jacques we turn into the seventeenth-century Rue Cassini, so named in 1790 to memorize the seventeenth-century organizer of the Observatory. Here Balzac lived in 1829 in a house no longer standing. The great painter J. P. Laurens has an hÔtel here. We find a Louis XVI monument in a court at No. 10. Subterranean passages, made and used in a past age by smugglers, have been discovered beneath the pavement of this old street.

Rue Denfert-Rochereau has its first numbers in arrondissement V. This was the “Via Infera,” the Lower Road of the Romans. The name Enfer, given later, is said to refer, not to the place of torment, but to the hellish noise persistently made in a hÔtel there built by a son of Hugues Capet, the hÔtel Vauvert, hence the French expression, “envoyer les gens au diable vert”—vert shortened from Vauvert, i.e. send them off—far away—to the devil! Enfer became d’Enfert, to which in 1878 was added the name of the general who defended Belfort in 1870: not exactly a happy combination! Many persons of note have dwelt in this old street. No. 25 (arrondissement V) is an ancient Carmelite convent, built, tradition says, on the site of a pagan temple: an oratory-chapel dedicated to St. Michael covered part of the site in early Christian days and a public cemetery. An ancient crypt still exists. It was in the convent here that Louise de la ValliÈre came to work till her death, in 1710. That first convent and church were razed in 1797. The Carmelites built a smaller one on the ancient grounds in 1802, and rebuilt their chapel in 1899. It did not serve them long. They were banished from France in 1901. The chapel, crypt and some vestiges of the ancient convent are before us here. Modern streets—Rue Val de GrÂce opened in 1881, Rue Nicole in 1864—run where the rest of the vast convent walls once rose. No. 57 is on the site of an ancient Roman burial-ground of which important traces were found in 1896. No. 68, ancient convent of the Visitation. No. 72 built in 1650 as an Oratorian convent, a maternity hospital under the Empire, now a children’s hospice. No. 71, couvent du Bon Pasteur—House of Mercy—founded in the time of Louis XVI, bought by the Paris Municipality in 1891, its chapel burnt by the Communards in 1871, rebuilt by the authorities of the Charity, worked now by Sisters of St. Thomas de Villeneuve. Within its walls we see interesting old-time features and beneath are the walls of reservoirs dating from the days when water was brought here from the heights of Rungis. No. 75, ancient Eudiste convent and chapel; ChÂteaubriand once dwelt at No. 88 and with his wife founded at No. 92 the Infirmerie Marie-ThÉrÈse, named after the duchesse d’AngoulÊme, daughter of Louis XVI, a home for poverty-stricken gentlepeople, transformed subsequently into an asylum for aged priests. Mme de ChÂteaubriand lies buried there beneath the high altar of the chapel.

Avenue d’OrlÉans, in olden days Route Nationale de Paris À OrlÉans, dating from the eighteenth century, and smaller streets connected with it, show us many old houses, while in the Villa Adrienne, opening at No. 17, we find a number of modern houses—pavilions—each bearing the name of a celebrity of past time. Rue de la Voie-Verte was so named from the market-gardens erewhile stretching here. Rue de la Tombe-Issoire runs across the site of an ancient burial-ground where was an immense tomb, said to have been made for the body of a giant: Isore or IsÏre, who, according to the legend, attacked Paris at the head of a body of Sarazins in the time of Charlemagne. Here and there along this street, as in the short streets leading out of it, we come upon interesting vestiges of the past, notably in Rue HallÉ, opening at No. 42. The pretty Parc Souris is quite modern. We find old houses in Avenue du Chatillon, an eighteenth-century thoroughfare. Rue des Plantes leads us to Place de Montrouge, in the thirteenth century the centre of a village so named either after an old-time squire, lord of the manor, Guis de Rouge, or because the soil is of red sandstone. The squire, maybe, gained his surname from the soil on which he built his chÂteau, while the village took its name from the squire. Rue Didot, once known as Rue des Terriers-aux-Lapins, memorizes the great printing-house founded in 1713. Rue de Vanves, leading to what was in olden days the village of the name, crosses Rue du ChÂteau at the point where in the eighteenth century the duc de Maine had a hunting-lodge. In Avenue du Maine we see ancient houses at intervals. Rue du Moulin-Vert recalls the existence of one of the numerous windmills on the land around the city in former days. Rue de la GaitÉ (eighteenth century) has ever been true to its name or the name true to the locality—one of dancing saloons and other popular amusements. The Cinema des Mille Colonnes was in pre-cinema days the “Bal des Mille Colonnes,” opened in 1833. Passing on up Avenue du Maine we come to arrondissement XV.