Paris_ The Collected Traveler - Barrie Kerper [176]
A sculpted oak tree decorates the façade of a tavern at no. 69—Le Vieux Chêne was the meeting place of a revolutionary group in 1848. And down the hill at no. 122, À la Bonne Source has the street’s oldest sign, a classified monument from the late 1500s showing water carriers at a well.
The market, which has operated since 1350, teems with basket-toting Parisians every day but Monday. And although the church of Saint-Médard is now an oasis of calm in the tumult, it was once the scene of religious hysteria so frenzied that the king was forced to intervene. When the death of a pious young deacon named François de Paris was followed by seemingly miraculous cures, unruly crowds mobbed the cemetery until Louis XV ordered it closed. The locked gates carried a stern message: “By order of the King, God is forbidden to perform miracles in this place.”
COUR DU COMMERCE SAINT-ANDRÉ
A wide arch at 130 boulevard Saint-Germain flanked by figures of Hermes and Hephaestus is the gateway to a time warp, the Cour du Commerce Saint-André.
This cobblestone passage is steeped in history. At no. 8, Marat ran a printing press that produced his revolutionary tabloid L’Ami du peuple. Standing in the narrow rue piétonne, I wonder if his press was loud enough to drown out the thumps coming from no. 9, where a carpenter was using sheep to test a new device he had built for its inventor, Dr. Ignace Guillotin. A year after Charlotte Corday murdered Marat in his bath, the guillotine would end the days of another famous resident. Danton, who moved into no. 20 in 1789, was arrested there in 1794 and executed six days later.
Benjamin Franklin and Thomas Jefferson frequented this street as patrons of the Café Procope, where Parisians first tasted coffee. Opened in 1686 by Sicilian Francesco Procopio dei Coltelli (and still open today), Le Procope was also a haunt of the Encyclopédistes—you’ll see some of their portraits in the windows. The restaurant’s A-list literary clientele has included everyone from La Fontaine and Voltaire to Jean-Paul Sartre and Simone de Beauvoir.
Today’s cour is half as long as it was before Haussmann created the boulevard Saint-Germain in 1866; Danton’s home stood roughly where his statue now stands, on the boulevard across from the entrance to the cour.
Although short, this street is full of lovely secrets. It originally followed the contrescarpe of Philippe Auguste’s wall, part of which still exists at no. 4. Inside the Catalonia tourist office’s gift shop are the impressive remains of a round tower, one of many that once studded the twelfth-century wall.
Another hidden treasure is the Cour de Rohan. This series of vine-draped courtyards linking the cour with the rue du Jardinet is where the bishops of Rouen once had their Parisian pied-à-terre. Its entrance is across from Le Procope.
No sleepy backwater, the cour is lively by day with shoppers and lunchers and by night with restaurants catering to the movie-going crowd of the Odéon quartier.
HAMEAU BOILEAU
Paris est pour un riche un pays de Cocagne:
Sans sortir de la ville, il trouve la campagne.
—Boileau
In one of my favorite fantasies, the one where I can live wherever I like and money is no object, I head straight for the sixteenth arrondissement and pick out a house in the Hameau Boileau. Not really a street, the hameau is a cluster of quiet, leafy cul-de-sacs full of butterflies and birds, where pretty homes nestle in gardens far from traffic but close to upscale amenities.
Back when Auteuil was a country village, poet Nicolas Boileau- Despréaux bought property here, seeking relief from the city he considered too crowded, noisy, and dangerous (in the seventeenth century!). Describing it caustically in Les Embarras de Paris, quoted above, he complains that the rich can buy peace and quiet in the city:
Mais moi, grâce au destin, qui n’ai ni feu ni lieu,
Je me loge où je puis, et comme il plaît à Dieu.
When that was written in 1660, Boileau had