the last degree unattractive as places of human habitation, but rich,
nevertheless, in historic associations, in picturesque detail, and in
archaeological interest. Such a street, for instance, was the Rue du
Fouarre (scarcely a feature of which has been modernized to this day),
where Dante, when a student of theology in Paris, attended the lectures
of one Sigebert, a learned monk of Gemblours, who discoursed to his
scholars in the open air, they sitting round him the while upon fresh
straw strewn upon the pavement. Such a street was the Rue des Cordiers,
close adjoining the Rue des Grès, where Rousseau lived and wrote; and
the Rue du Dragon, where might then be seen the house of Bernard
Palissy; and the Rue des Maçons, where Racine lived; and the Rue des
Marais, where Adrienne Lecouvreur--poor, beautiful, generous, ill-fated
Adrienne Lecouvreur!--died. Here, too, in a blind alley opening off the
Rue St. Jacques, yet stands part of that Carmelite Convent in which, for
thirty years, Madame de la Vallière expiated the solitary frailty of her
life. And so at every turn! Not a gloomy by-street, not a dilapidated
fountain, not a grim old college façade but had its history, or its
legend. Here the voice of Abelard thundered new truths, and Rabelais
jested, and Petrarch discoursed with the doctors. Here, in the Rue de
l'Ancienne Comédie, walked the shades of Racine, of Molière, of
Corneille, of Voltaire. Dear, venerable, immortal old Quartier Latin!
Thy streets were narrow, but they were the arteries through which,
century after century, circulated all the wisdom and poetry, all the
art, and science, and learning of France! Their gloom, their squalor,
their very dirt was sacred. Could I have had my will, not a stone of the
old place should have been touched, not a pavement widened, not a
landmark effaced.

Then beside, yet not apart from, all that was mediæval and historic in
the Pays Latin, ran the gay, effervescent, laughing current of the life