ridge of Birds). It spanned the river from
the end of the Rue St. Denis and the arch of the Grand Chatelet to the
Tour de l'Horloge of the Palais de Justice. In 1621, however, it and
the Pont au Change were consumed by fire in a few hours and, in 1639,
the two wooden bridges were replaced by a bridge of stone, the Pont au
Change, which stood until rebuilt in 1858.

[Footnote 129: By a curious coincidence the widening of the Rue de la
Ferronnerie had been ordered just before the king was assassinated.]

[Illustration: OLD HOUSES NEAR PONT ST. MICHEL, SHOWING SPIRE OF THE
STE. CHAPELLE.]

We are able to give the impression which the Paris of Henri Quatre
made on an English traveller, a friend of Ben Jonson and author of
_Coryat's Crudities, hastily gobbled up in five months' Travell_. The
first objects that met Coryat's eye are characteristic. As he
travelled along the St. Denis road he passed "seven[130] faire
pillars of freestone at equal distances, each with an image of St.
Denis and his two companions, and a little this side of Paris was the
fairest gallows I ever saw, built on Montfaucon, which consisted of
fourteene fair pillars of freestone." He notes "the fourteene gates of
Paris, the goodly buildings, mostly of fair, white stone and"--a
detail always unpleasantly impressed on travellers--"the evil-smelling
streets, which are the dirtiest and the most stinking I ever saw in
any city in my life. Lutetia! well dothe it brooke being so called
from the Latin word _lutum_, which signifieth dirt." Coryat was
impressed by the bridges--"the goodly bridge of white freestone nearly
finished (the Pont Neuf); a famous bridge that far exceedeth this,
having one of the fairest streets in Paris called our Ladies street;
the bridge of Exchange where the goldsmiths live; St. Michael's
bridge, and the bridge of Birds." He admires the "Via Jacobea, full of
booke-sellers' faire shoppes, most plentifully furnished with bookes,
and the fair building, very spacious and broad, where the Judges sit
in the Palais de Justice, the roofs sumptuously gilt and embossed,
with an exceeding multitude of great, long bosses hanging downward."
Coryat next visited the fine quadrangle of the Louvre, whose outside
was exquisitely wrought with festoons, and decked with many stately
pillars and images. From Queen Mary's bedroom he went to a room[131]
"which excelleth not only all that are now in the world but also all
that were since the creation there