Notre Dame de Paris - Bartleby.com

element to the view: that of a long belt of abbeys which bordered almost its entire circumference from
east to west; and, lying just inside the fortified wall which encircled Paris, furnished a second internal
rampart of cloisters and chapels. Thus, immediately adjoining the park of the Tournelles, between the
Rue Saint-Antoine and the old Rue du Temple, stood the old convent of Sainte-Catherine, with its
immense grounds, bounded only by the city wall. Between the old and the new Rue du Temple was the
Temple itself, a grim sheaf of lofty towers, standing haughty and alone, surrounded by a vast, embattled
wall. Between the Rue Neuve du Temple and the Rue Saint-Martin, in the midst of gardens, stood the
Abbey of Saint-Martin, a superb fortified church, whose girdle of towers and crown of steeples were
second only to Saint-Germain-des-Prés in strength and splendour.
Between the two streets of Saint-Martin and Saint-Denis stretched the convent enclosure of the Trinité,
and between the Rue Saint-Denis and the Rue Montorgueil that of Filles-Dieu. Close by, one caught a
glimpse of the mouldering roofs and broken wall of the Cour des Miracles, the only profane link in that
pious chain.
Lastly, the fourth area, standing out distinctly in the conglomeration of roofs on the right bank, and
occupying the eastern angle formed by the city wall and the river wall, was a fresh knot of palaces and
mansions clustered round the foot of the Louvre. The old Louvre of Philip Augustus, that stupendous pile
whose enormous middle tower mustered round it twenty-three major towers, irrespective of the smaller
ones, appeared from the distance as if encased within the Gothic roof-lines of the Hôtel d’Alencon and
the Petit-Bourbon. This hydra of towers, this guardian monster of Paris, with its twenty-four heads ever
erect, the tremendous ridge of its roof sheathed in lead or scales of slate and glistening in metallic lustre,
furnished an unexpected close to the western configuration of the Town.
This then, was the town of Paris in the fifteenth century—an immense mass—what the Romans called
insula—of burgher dwelling-houses, flanked on either side by two blocks of palaces, terminated the one
by the Louvre, the other by the Tournelles, bordered on the north by a long chain of abbeys and walled
gardens all blended and mingling in one harmonious whole; above these thousand buildings with their
fantastic outline of tiled and slated roofs, the steeples—fretted, fluted honeycombed—of the forty-four
churches on the right bank; myriads of streets cutting through it; as boundary: on one side a circuit of
lofty walls with square towers (those of the University wall were round); on the other, the Seine,
intersected by bridges and carrying numberless boats.
Beyond the walls a few suburbs hugged the protection of the gates, but they were less numerous and
more scattered than on the side of the University. In the rear of the Bastille about twenty squalid cottages
huddled round the curious stonework of the Croix-Faubin, and the abutments of the Abbey of
Saint-Antoine des Champs; then came Popincourt, buried in cornfields; then La Courtille, a blithe village
of taverns; the market-town of Saint-Laurent with its church steeple appearing in the distance as if one of
the pointed towers of the Porte Saint-Martin; the suburb of Saint-Denis with the vast enclosure of
Saint-Ladre; outside the Porte-Montmartre, the Grange-Bâteliére encircled by white walls; behind that
again, with its chalky slopes, Montmartre, which then had almost as many churches as wind-mills, but
has only retained the wind-mills, for the world is now merely concerned for bread for the body. Finally,
beyond the Louvre, among the meadows, stretched the Faubourg Saint-Honorè, already a considerable
suburb, and the verdant pastures of Petite-Bretagne and the Marché-aux-Porceaux or pig-market, in the
middle of which stood the horrible furnace where they seethed the false coiners.
On the top of a hill, rising out of the solitary plain between La Courtille and Saint-Laurent, you will