ow mediaeval Rue de Venise,
formerly the Ruelle des Usuriers, home of the Law speculators (p.
242). At No. 27, L. of the Rue St. Martin and corner of the Rue
Quincampoix, is the old inn of the Epee de Bois (now a l'Arrivee de
Venise), where Prince de Hoorn and two other nobles assassinated and
robbed a banker in open day and were broken alive on the wheel in the
Place de Greve. Mirabeau and L. Racine, with other wits are said to
have met there and Mazarin granted letters patent to a company of
dancing masters who taught there, under the direction of the Roi des
Violins: from these modest beginnings grew the National Academy of
Dancing. We return E. along the Rue de Venise and pass to its end;
then cross obliquely to the R. and continue E., along the Rue Simon le
Franc, traversing the Rue du Temple, to the Rue des Blancs Manteaux.
This we follow still eastward to its intersection with Rue des
Archives. Turning down this street to the R. we cross, and at Nos. 24
or 26 enter the fifteenth-century cloister (restored) of the monastery
of the Billettes, founded at the end of the thirteenth century to
commemorate the miracle of the Sacred Host, which had defied the
efforts of Jonathan, the Jew to destroy it by steel, fire and
boiling water. The chapel, built on the site of the Jew's house in
1294, was rebuilt in 1754, and is now a Protestant church. The
miraculous Host was preserved as late as the early eighteenth century
in St. Jean en Greve, and carried annually in procession on the octave
of Corpus Christi. We return northwards along the Rue des Archives,
and reach at the corner of the Rue des Francs Bourgeois the fine
pseudo-classic Hotel de Soubise, now the National Archives, erected in
1704 for the Princesse de Soubise on the site of the old Hotel of the
Constable of France, Olivier de Clisson, where Charles VI., after his
terrible vengeance on the revolted burgesses, agreed to remit further
punishment, and where the Duke of Clarence established himself at the
time of the English occupation. It became later (1553) the fortress of
the Guises and rivalled the Louvre in strength and splendour. The
picturesque Gothic portal (restored) of the old Hotel de Clisson still
exists higher up the Rue des Archives. The lavishly decorated Hotel de
Soubise, entered from the Rue des Francs Bourgeois, in which are
exhibited historical documents and other objects of profound interest,
though bereft of much of its former splendour is well w