At the Revolution it was one of the first feudal
buildings demolished--not a stone of the old pile remains; the
Pont-au-Change had long before had its wooden piers changed for noble
stone ones, and on the site where this fortress stood is now the Place
de Chatelet, with a Napoleonic monument in the midst--a column
inscribed with names of bloody battle-fields, on its summit a golden
wing-expanding Victory, and at its base four little impudent dolphins,
snorting out water into the buckets of the Porteurs d'Eau.

Behind the Chastelet stood the _Grande Boucherie_--the Leadenhall
market of Paris an hundred years ago; and near it, up a dirty street
or two, was one of the finest churches of the capital, dedicated to St
Jacques. The lofty tower of this latter edifice (its body perished
when the Boucherie and the Chastelet disappeared) still rises in
gloomy majesty above all the surrounding buildings. It is as high as
those of Notre Dame; and from its upper corners, enormous
_gargouilles_--those fantastic water-spouts of the middle ages--gape
with wide-stretched jaws, but no longer send down the washings of the
roof on the innocent passengers. Hereabouts lived Nicholas Flamel, the
old usurer, who made money so fast that it was said he used to sup
nightly with his Satanic majesty, and who thereupon built part of the
church to save his bacon. He was of opinion that it was well to have
the "_mens sana in corpore sano_"--that it was no joke to be burnt;
and so he stuck close to the church, taking care that himself and his
wife, Pernelle, should have a comfortable resting-place for their
bones within the walls of St Jacques. When this was a fashionable
quarter of Paris, the court doctor and accoucheur did not disdain to
reside in it; for Jean Fernel, the medical attendant of Catharine de
Medicis, lived and died within the shade of this old tower. He was a
fortunate fellow, a sort of Astley Cooper or Clarke in his way, and
Catharine used to give him 10,000 crowns, or something like L.6000,
every time she favoured France with an addition to the royal family.
He and numerous other worthies mouldered into dust within the
precincts of St Jacques; but their remains have long since been
scattered to the winds; and where the church once stood is now an
ignoble market for old clothes; the abode of Jews and thieves.

After passing round the Grand Chastelet, and crossing the
market-place, you might enter the Rue St Denis, the great street of