Rue Saint-Honoré

“ By day it is Paris epitomized; by night it is a dream of Greece. The rue Traversiere-Saint-Honore—is not that a villainous street? Look at the wretched little houses with two windows on a floor, where vice, crime, and misery abound. The narrow streets exposed to the north, where the sun never comes more than three or four times a year, are the cut-throat streets which murder with impunity; the authorities of the present day do not meddle with them; but in former times the Parliament might perhaps have summoned the lieutenant of police and reprimanded him for the state of things ”

“ The carriage of the princes and princesses passing at that moment, the little princes saw them—it was an added joy."
The cortege followed this route: the Rue du Faubourg Saint-Honore, the boulevards to the Rue Saint-Denis, the Rue Saint-Denis, the Place du Chatelet, the Pont au Change, the Rue de la Bailer, the Marche-Neuf, the Rue Neuve-Notre-Dame, the Parvis. At every moment the King reined in his superb Arab horse to regard more at ease the delighted crowd. ”

“ This house, bought during the first six months which followed the revolution of July by Mademoiselle Marie-Jeanne-Brigitte Thuillier, a spinster of full age, stands about the middle of the rue Saint-Dominique d’Enfer, to the right as you enter by the rue d’Enfer, so that the main building occupied by Monsieur Thuillier faces south. ”

“ According to the weather, she may be seen flying in the Avenue of the Champs-Élyseés, which is bounded on the east by the Place Louis XV., on the west by the Avenue de Marigny, to the south by the road, to the north by the gardens of the Faubourg Saint-Honoré. Never is this pretty variety of woman to be seen in the hyperborean regions of the Rue Saint-Denis, never in the Kamtschatka of miry, narrow, commercial streets, never anywhere in bad weather. ”

“ Paris, in the old parts of it, is, as the French express it, mal percée. The way to remedy this evil is obvious. I will venture to suggest one improvement,—that the Rue St. Honoré be continued, no matter whether in a straight or curved line, through the streets of St. Denis and St. Martin, by piercing these two streets, to the line of streets which lead to the Place de l'Elephant and the Rue du Fauxbourg St. Antoine.
I will also take the liberty of hinting that a populous city can well afford to keep its streets clean: the streets themselves pay this expense ”

“ One face of our hotel borders and looks on this street. After going a good way, we came to an intersection with another street, the name of which I forget; but, at this point, Ravaillac sprang at the carriage of Henry IV. and plunged his dagger into him. As we went down the Rue St. Honore, it grew more and more thronged, and with a meaner class of people. The houses still were high, and without the shabbiness of exterior that distinguishes the old part of London, being of light-colored stone ”

“ The rue de la Paix is a wide street, a fine street, yet it wakens none of those gracefully noble thoughts which come to an impressible mind in the middle of the rue Royale, and it certainly lacks the majesty which reigns in the Place Vendome. ”

“ As we drive in a hackney cab past this dead-alive spot, and chance to look down the little Rue du Doyenne, a shudder freezes the soul, and we wonder who can lie there, and what things may be done there at night, at an hour when the alley is a cut-throat pit, and the vices of Paris run riot there under the cloak of night. ”

“ The end of the Rue de la Chanvrerie, opposite the barricade, had been evacuated by the troops, as we have stated it seemed to be free, and presented itself to passers-by with a sinister tranquillity. The Rue Saint-Denis was as dumb as the avenue of Sphinxes at Thebes. Not a living being in the cross-roads, which gleamed white in the light of the sun. Nothing is so mournful as this light in deserted streets. ”

“ Not all have disappeared for ever of those vast melancholy gardens, those hoary mansions buried in streets where the grass grows, and whose noble but gloomy façades would never cause one to suspect the riches they contain. Many are in the vicinity of the Hôtel des Invalides. Others are in the Rue Vanneau, the Rue Bellechasse, the Rue de Varenne, the Rue Saint-Guillaume, the Rue Bonaparte; some also in the Rue Visconti, which dark narrow lane possesses illustrious souvenirs. ”

“ Between the little gate leading to the Bridge of the Carrousel and the Rue du Musee, every one having come to Paris, were it but for a few days, must have seen a dozen of houses with a decayed frontage where the dejected owners have attempted no repairs, the remains of an old block of buildings of which the destruction was begun at the time when Napoleon determined to complete the Louvre. This street, and the blind alley known as the Impasse du Doyenne, are the only passages into this gloomy and forsaken block, inhabited perhaps by ghosts, for there never is anybody to be seen. ”

“ Almost all the streets of old Paris, of which ancient chronicles laud the magnificence, were like this damp and gloomy labyrinth, where the antiquaries still find historical curiosities to admire. For instance, on the house then forming the corner where the Rue du Tourniquet joined the Rue de la Tixeranderie, the clamps might still be seen of two strong iron rings fixed to the wall, the relics of the chains put up every night by the watch to secure public safety. ”

“ WENCESLAS MY DEAR,—I still believe in your love, though it is nearly three weeks since I saw you. Is this scorn? Delilah can scarcely believe that. Does it not rather result from the tyranny of a woman whom, as you told me, you can no longer love? Wenceslas, you are too great an artist to submit to such dominion. Home is the grave of glory.—Consider now, are you the Wenceslas of the Rue du Doyenne? You missed fire with my father’s statue; but in you the lover is greater than the artist, and you have had better luck with his daughter. You are a father, my beloved Wenceslas. ”

“ We may join the early-goers among these men, who make their way to another house, not far distant. There 220 are temptations to stop before, and explore within, the seventeenth-century mansions all along Rues Sévigné and du Parc-Royal, but we pass on into Rue Turenne—once Rue Saint-Louis, the longest and widest and foremost in fashion of Marais streets, now merely big and bustling, with little left of its ancient glory—until we come to its No. ”

“ If it fronted on the rue Saint-Médard we should be unable to live there, for the rue Saint-Médard, in spite of the apostolic nomenclature, is probably the most disgusting street in Paris.
It is old, three hundred years or more, and the houses that engloom it are black, corroded and decrepit. Its lower end is blocked by the aforesaid hostel of the blind windows, its upper is narrow and wry-necked where the Hôtel des Bons Garçons bulges into it. Between the two is a dim, verminous gulf of mildewed masonry. The timid, well-dressed person pauses on its threshold and turns back. ”

“ I remember how you worked all night in the Rue du Doyenne. You really were rather a spooney; you married as a starving man snatches a loaf. You knew nothing of Paris, and you see where you are landed. But you turned a deaf ear to Lisbeth’s devotion, as you did to the love of a woman who knows her Paris by heart.”
“Say no more!” cried Steinbock; “I am done for!”
“You shall have your ten thousand francs, my dear Wenceslas; but on one condition,” she went on, playing with his handsome curls. ”

“ This Rue Saint-Antoine was, in those days, hardly less of a bustling thoroughfare than in our days, albeit it was then a country road, unpaved, unlighted, bordered by great gardens with great mansions within them, or small dwellings between them. Outside Porte Saint-Antoine—that gate in the town wall alongside the Bastille where now is the end of Rue de la Bastille—on the road to Vincennes, was La Roquette, a maison-de-plaisance of the Valois kings. Hence the title of the modern prisons, on the same site. ”

“ It will not be the first time in history that conclusion has preceded facts.
In 1560, the houses of the rue de la Vieille-Pelleterie skirted the left bank of the Seine, between the pont Notre-Dame and the pont au Change. A public footpath and the houses then occupied the space covered by the present roadway. Each house, standing almost in the river, allowed its dwellers to get down to the water by stone or wooden stairways, closed and protected by strong iron railings or wooden gates, clamped with iron. The houses, like those in Venice, had an entrance on terra firma and a water entrance. ”

“ In order to return thither, he took the Rue Saint-Louis, the Rue Culture-Sainte-Catherine, and the Blancs-Manteaux; it was a little longer, but it was the road through which, for the last three months, he had become accustomed to pass every day on his way from the Rue de l'Homme Arme to the Rue des Filles-du-Calvaire, in order to avoid the obstructions and the mud in the Rue Vielle-du-Temple. ”

“ The rue du Palais is continued in a straight line by the short rue de Monte-a-Regret, which leads to the place des Arenes, where the executions take place, and which probably owes its name to that circumstances. There is therefore but little distance to go, few houses to pass, and few windows to look from. No person in good society would be willing to mingle in the crowd which would fill the streets. ”

“ Standing at the corner of the rue des Postes and rue des Poules, it presented first a ground-floor, occupied partly by a shop for the sale of the commonest kind of wine, painted a coarse bright red, decorated with curtains of red calico, furnished with a leaden counter, and guarded by formidable iron bars. Above the gate of an odious alley hung a frightful lantern, on which were the words "Night lodgings here." The outer walls were covered with iron crossbars, showing, apparently, the insecurity of the building, which was owned by the wine-merchant, who also inhabited the entresol. ”

“ The picturesque street seems to have a repose amid its beautiful surroundings commensurate with the peaceful industry that has made its undying fame; for thanks to its having been the head-quarters of the beautiful lace manufacture, the name of Honiton is better known than that of many a big city. That its renown should have overshadowed other places is doubtless owing to its being situated on the great coach roads from London and from Bath to Exeter and the ports beyond ”

“ Honiton is one of those, and may pass not only for a pleasant good town, as before, but stands in the best and pleasantest part of the whole county, and I cannot but recommend it to any gentlemen that travel this road, that if they please to observe the prospect for half a mile till their coming down the hill and to the entrance into Honiton, the view of the country is the most beautiful landscape in the world—a mere picture—and I do not remember the like in any one place in England. ”

“ In Revolution days it was known as Rue Mont-Marat! As long as Paris had fortified boundary walls there was always a Porte Montmartre, moved northward three times, as the city bounds extended. The Porte of Philippe-Auguste was where the house No. 30 now stands, and this part of the street was known then as Rue Porte-Montmartre. The Passage de la Reine de Hongrie memorizes a certain dame de la Halle in whom Marie-Antoinette saw a remarkable likeness to her mother, the Queen of Hungary. The woman became for her generation “la Reine de Hongrie”—the alley where she dwelt was called by this name. ”

“ It was known at one time as Rue St-Germain, and was a great shoemaking street. It is rich in vestiges of the past. Almost every house has interesting features. The modern Lycée Fénelon at No. 45, the first girls’ lycée in Paris, stands on the site of the ancient hôtel of the ducs d’Orléans. No. 52, hôtel du Tillet-de-la-Bussière. Nos. 47-49, on the site of the ancient mansion of the Kings of Navarre and of the Vieuville, of which some traces are still seen. At No. 11, a house on the site of the place where stood the old church, Gounod was born in 1818. ”

“ That last you brought me, more than six weeks ago, it is there in the cupboard; you can take it away with you."
"Heavens! how ungrateful sick men are!" whispered the widow Cardinal to Perrache.
Nevertheless, to exhibit solicitude, she arranged the pillow under the patient's head, saying:—
"There! uncle, don't you feel better like that?"
"Let me alone!" shouted Toupillier, angrily; "I want no one here; I want wine; leave me in peace."
"Don't get angry, little uncle; we'll fetch you some wine."
"Number six wine, rue des Canettes," cried the pauper. ”

“ The short Rue Guénégaud, memorizing the mansion once there, bordering at one part the walls of the Mint, shows us along the rest of its course, at No. 1, remains of a once famous marionnettes theatre; at No. 19 an old gabled house; in the court, No. 29, a tower of Philippe-Auguste’s wall; an ancient inscription at No. 35; a fine old door at No. 16, etc. The narrow old-world Rue de Nevers shows us none but ancient houses. This thirteenth-century street was formerly closed at both ends and known therefore as Rue des Deux-Portes. Beneath No. ”

“ The great high road from Exeter to London passes a short distance north of Ottery and follows the river valley on its way to the old town under the shadow of Dumpdon Hill. Honiton is of world-wide fame in connexion with the beautiful lace that is still made in the vicinity. The long and broad High Street is practically all there is of the town, except for a few shops and smaller houses on the way to the railway station. Save on market day Honiton sleeps the hours away, or seems to do so ”

“ We see only modern houses along the Avenue of to-day. Rue Matignon was opened across the ancient Jardin d’hiver where fine tropical plants erewhile had flourished. No. 12 was the Vénerie Impériale.
Avenue des Champs-Élysées is bordered on both sides by modern mansions. No. 25, hôtel de la Païve, of late years the Traveller’s Club, during the war an ambulance, represents the style of the Second Empire. Avenue Gabriel with its grand mansions was formed in 1818 on the Marais-des-Gourdes—marshy land. The Rue Marbeuf was in the eighteenth century Ruelle des Marais, then Rue des Gourdes. ”