AN ancient place and part of the old Rue de l’Hirondelle, and an ancient chapel stretched in bygone days where now we see the broad new Place St-Michel. The colossal fountain we see there was put up in 1860, replacing a seventeenth-century fountain on the ancient place, which lay a little more to the south. Of the boulevard—the famous “Boule Miche”—we will speak later (see p. 306).

Turning into Rue de l’Hirondelle, in the twelfth century Rue l’Arondale-en-Laac, then Rue Herondalle, we see remains of the ancient CollÈge d’Antin, founded in 1371, and an eighteenth-century house on the site of the mansion of the bishop of Chartres previously there. Rue GÎt-le-Coeur, probably indicated in fourteenth-century days the dwelling-place of the King’s cook ... Gille his name; coeur, a misspelling for queux, cook. At No. 5 we see remains of hÔtel SÉguier.

Rue SÉguier was a thoroughfare, a country road in Childebert’s time; in the fourteenth century it became a street with the name PavÉe-St-AndrÉ-des-Arts. Every house has some interesting feature. The famous Hostellerie St-FranÇois till the eighteenth century on the site of No. 3, was the starting-point of the coaches for Normandy and Brittany. At No. 6 we see traces of the hÔtel de Nemours. The FrÈres Cordonniers de St-CrÉpin, founded in 1645 (Shoemakers’ Confraternity), had its quarters where we see the Nos. 9, 11, 13. J. de Ste-Beuve, the Jansenist, was born and in 1677 died at No. 17. At No. 18 we see all that is left of a fourteenth-century hÔtel de Nevers on the site of an older hÔtel. The burial-ground of the church St-AndrÉ stretched along part of Rue Suger: the presbytery was on the site of No. 13. Every house in this narrow old street tells of past days. At No. 3 we find traces of the chapel of the CollÈge de Boissy, founded in 1360 by a Canon of Chartres for seven poor students. Another old-time college stood in Rue de l’Éperon and till 1907, an ancient house, a dependency of the church St-AndrÉ-des-Arts. Rue Serpente, a winding road in its earliest days, a street about the year 1200, was the site of the celebrated hÔtel Serpente, and of the firm of printers where Tallien was an employÉ. The very modern Rue Danton, with its emphatically up-to-date structure in re-enforced concrete, has swept away a host of ancient houses. The hÔtel des SociÉtÉs Savantes is on the site of the hÔtel de Thou, l’hÔtel des États-de-Blois in the time of Louis XV.

Rue Mignon, twelfth century, recalls yet another college founded in 1343 by a dignitary of Chartres of this name; ancient houses at Nos. 1 and 5.

The most interesting of these old streets is Rue Hautefeuille with its two turrets, one at No. 5, the ancient hÔtel of the Abbots of FÉcamp, fourteenth century, the other octagonal, at No. 21, on the corner of what was once part of the CollÈge Damville of the same date: there in Roman times stood the castle Altum Folium—Hautefeuille—of which remains were found in the fourteenth century. This old street was no doubt a road leading to the citadel.

RUE HAUTEFEUILLE
RUE HAUTEFEUILLE
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