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By Root 641 0

to stop there, Paris had already worn out the three concentric circles of walls, which in the time of Julian the Apostate were, as we may say, in embryo, in the Grand-Châtelet and the Petit-Chatelet. The mighty city burst its four girdles of ramparts in succession, like a child outgrowing his last year’s clothes. Under Louis XI, groups of the ruined towers belonging to the old enclosure rose here and there from the sea of houses like hill-tops after a flood,—archipelagoes, as it were, of the old Paris submerged beneath the new.

Since then Paris has, unfortunately for us, undergone another transformation, but has crossed only one more wall, that of Louis XV,—that miserable rampart of lath and plaster, worthy of the king who built it, worthy of the poet who celebrated it in a verse defying translation:—

“Le mur murant Paris rend Paris murmurant.”av

In the fifteenth century, Paris was still divided into three quite distinct and separate cities, each possessing its own physiognomy, peculiar features, manners, customs, privileges, and history,—the City, the University, and the Town. The City, which occupied the island, was the oldest, the smallest, and the mother of the other two, crowded in between them (if we may be allowed the comparison) like a little old woman between two tall, handsome daughters. The University covered the left bank of the Seine, from the Tournelle to the Tour de Nesle,—points corresponding in the Paris of today to the Wine-market and the Mint. Its precincts infringed boldly upon the region where Julian built his baths. The mountain of St. Geneviève was included in this division. The culminating point of this curve of walls was the Porte Papale; that is, just about where the Pantheon now stands. The Town, which was the largest of the three parts of Paris, held possession of the right bank of the river. Its quay, broken and interrupted at various points, ran along the Seine, from the Tour de Billy to the Tour du Bois; that is, from the present site of the Public Granaries to the present site of the Tuileries. These four points, at which the river intersected the precincts of the capital, the Tournelle and the Tour de Nesle on the left, the Tour de Billy and the Tour du Bois on the right, were called the “Four Towers of Paris,” by way of distinction. The Town extended even farther into the country than the University. The extreme limits of the Town (in the time of Charles V) were the Portes Saint-Denis and Saint-Martin, the situation of which has not been changed.

As we have just observed, each of these three great divisions of Paris was a city in itself, but a city too individual to be complete,—a city which could not dispense with the aid of the other two. Thus, they were utterly unlike in aspect. Churches abounded in the City, palaces in the Town, and colleges in the University. To pass over the minor eccentricities of old Paris and the caprices of those persons holding right of road, we may make the general statement-speaking only of the great masses in the chaos of communal jurisdictions—that the island was subject to the bishop, the right bank of the river to the provost, and the left bank to the rector; the Provost or Mayor of Paris, a royal and not a municipal officer, having authority over them all. The City contained Notre-Dame; the Town, the Louvre and the Hotel de Ville; and the University the College of the Sorbonne. The Town contained Les Halles, the City Hôtel-Dieu, the University the Pré-aux-Clercs.aw For any offence committed by a student on the left bank of the river, he was tried upon the island at the Palace of Justice, or law courts, and punished on the right bank, at Montfaucon, unless the rector, finding the University strong and the king weak, interfered; for it was one of the privileges of the students to be hanged in their own domain.

(The majority of these privileges, it may be noted in passing,—and there were many more desirable than this,—had been extorted from various kings by riots and revolts. This is the traditional course of things: a French proverb declares that the