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The corner of the rue Pave is marked by the hotel de LAMOIGNON (no.24) built in 1584 for Diane de France, duchess of Angulated. The chairman of Parliament Lamoignon lived here from 1658 to 1677. It is now the Historical Library of the City of Paris. That's what was already written in my page "Musee Cognaq Jay and walk" of the Marais (4th arr) on my web site.
But what I learned from Arthur Gillette, is that Alphonse Daudet lived in the house. But if you continue just to your left in rue Pavée, note the house-high vertical fragment of solid masonry opposite no.19. That's all what remains of the horrible, terrible Women's Jail, called "PETITE FORCE". Zenith of horror was reached here during the so-called "September Massacres", during the revolution in 1792. An example? Take now the case of princess Lamballe, adviser of queen Marie-Antoinette. Tried in the prison on September 3, she was to be "set-free"(elargie in French). But that didn't mean: you are free and just return home. No sir! She was handed over to the unruly drunk crowd that waited outside. Should I spare you what happened? I will not: first a wigmaker snatched off her bonnet with the tip of his pike. Another rowdy struck her in the kidneys with a log. Then she was beaten with fist blows, stripped off her clothes and left exhibited to the insults of the crowd for several hours. Finally, to make the celebration complete, she was dragged some distance from the prison, decapitated by a knife, and her head hoisted high on the end of a pike. But the wigmaker was not finished: he ripped open her chest and cut out her heart, held it at the end of a sabre. Obscene mutilations followed, etc....Let's stop here, I feel that I'm going to throw up.
Such gruesome episodes happened regularly, until the end of the "Terreur".
Walk back to the rue des Francs Bourgeois and on to the rue Payenne, where at no.5 the "Temple de l'Humanite" is housed, a replica of the positivist church of Rio de Janeiro. This house was built by the famous architect Mansart, and later known as "Clotilde's house". Clotilde was the muse of Auguste Comte, a great philosopher, who founded the Positivist School in the 19th century, based on the unshakable belief in the progress of human mankind. The philosophy soon became a sort of religion and is very popular in.....Brazil.
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Mme de Montespan |
Return again rue des Francs Bourgeois, look at some handsome houses of which at no.26, the hotel de Sandreville is a fine example of Louis XVI architecture, at no.31, hotel d'Albret, where "madame de Montespan ", mistress of king Louis XIV, lived for a while. Which gave her the opportunity to give him eight (8) children. They didn't invent the pill yet :-):-)! An anecdote, fished out God knows where, by Mr.Arthur Gillette, tells us, that when she had to give birth to the second child, she summoned a doctor who came blind folded, not to see who his clients were. But he recognized her, felt faint and asked for a glass of wine, which was served to him by..... the Sun-King in person! What a nice and friendly man!
Bibliography
Main source: Paris through the ages, stroll no.8, the Naughty Marais, by Arthur Gillette (ed. Media-Cartes, Paris)-Paris 19eme siecle, l'immeuble et la rue, by F.Loyer, ed.Hazan, 1994
Jack (with the obliging permission of Arthur Gillette)
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