northwards through the mass of houses that now crowd the Marais: the
latter, the Grande Chaussee de Monseigneur St. Denis, to the shrine of
the martyred saint of Lutetia, the former, the great Roman Street
which led to the provinces of the north.

[Illustration: WEST DOOR OF ST. MERRI.]

We set forth northwards from the Place du Chatelet, at the foot of the
Pont au Change, where stood the massive pile of the Grande Chatelet,
originally built to defend the bridge from the Norman pirates as the
Petit Chatelet was to defend the Petit Pont. It subsequently became
the official seat and prison of the Provost of Paris, where he held
his criminal court and organised the City Watch, and was demolished in
1802. Below this festered an irregular maze of slums, the aggregation
of seven centuries, the most fetid, insanitary and criminal quarter of
Paris, known as the Vallee de Misere, which only disappeared in 1855.
On our R. soars the beautiful flamboyant Gothic tower, all that
remains of the great church of St. Jacques de la Boucherie. This fine
monument was saved by the good sense of the architect Giraud who, when
the church was sold to the housebreakers during the Revolution,
inserted a clause in the warrant exempting the tower from demolition.
It was afterwards used as a lead foundry and twice narrowly escaped
destruction by fire. Purchased by the Ville, it seemed safe at last,
but again it was threatened in 1853 by the prolongation of the Rue de
Rivoli: luckily, however, the new street just passed by on the north.
The statue of Pascal under the vaulting reminds the traveller that the
great thinker conducted some barometrical experiments on the summit,
and the statues of the patron saints of craftsmen in the niches, that
under its shadow the industrial arts were practised. We ascend the Rue
St. Martin from the N.E. corner of the Square, and on our R. find the
late Gothic church of St. Merri, built on the site of the
seventh-century Chapel of St. Pierre, where Odo Falconarius, one of
the defenders of Paris in the siege of 886, is known to have been
buried. We enter for the sake of the beautiful sixteenth-century glass
in the choir and a curious old painting of the same epoch in the first
chapel beyond the entrance to the sacristy, Ste. Genevieve and her
Flock, with a view of Paris in the background. We continue to ascend
the street, noting No. 122, an old fountain and some reliefs, and soon
reach, R. and L., the quaint and narr