r, 1822,
when the last political offenders, the four serjeants of Rochelle,
were executed, and to July 1830, when the last murderer was hung
there, has soaked up the blood of many a famous enemy of State and
Church and of innumerable notorious and obscure criminals, including
the infamous Marquise de Brinvilliers, who was burned alive, and
Cartouche, broken on the wheel. A permanent gibbet stood there and a
market cross, and there during the English wars the infuriated
Parisians tied the hands and feet of hundreds of English prisoners
taken at Pontoise and flung them into the Seine. Every St. John's
eve--the church and cloister of St. Jean stood behind the Hotel de
Ville--a great bonfire was lighted in the Place de Greve, fireworks
were let off, and a salvo of artillery celebrated the festival. When
the relations between Crown and Commune were felicitous the king
himself would take part in the _fete_ and fire the pile with a torch
of white wax decorated with crimson velvet. A royal supper and ball in
the Grande Salle concluded the revels. Not infrequently the ashes at
the stake where a poor wretch had met his doom had scarcely cooled
before the joyous flames and fireworks of the Feu de St. Jean burst
forth, and the very day after the execution of the Count of Bouteville
the people were dancing round the fires of St. John. The present Hotel
de Ville, by Ballu and Deperthes, completed in 1882,[225] is one of
the finest modern edifices in Europe, and contains some of the most
important productions of contemporary French painters and sculptors:
Puvis de Chavannes, Carolus Duran, Benjamin Constant, Jean Paul
Laurens, Carriere Dalou, Chapu and others.

[Footnote 224: The masons of Paris were wont to stand on the Place
waiting to be hired, and sometimes contrived to exact higher wages.
Hence the origin of the term _faire greve_ (to go out on strike).]

[Footnote 225: Charles Normand, founder of the Societe des Amis des
Monuments, appeals for information concerning the fate of the old
inscription commemorating the laying of the foundation stone of the
former Hotel de Ville in 1533. It is said to have been appropriated
(_se serait empare_) by an Englishman in 1874.]

We pass to the E. of the Hotel, where stands the church of St. Gervais
and St. Protais, whose facade by Solomon Debrosse (1617) "is
regarded," says Felibien (1725), "as a masterpiece of art by the
best architectural authorities" ("_les plus intelligens en
archit