who ruled the roast in the golden prime of the Citizen-King. He was a pleasant fellow, a great favorite with Henri Quatre, and his house was a cherished place of réunion for the companions of the gay monarch's petits soupers. Returning to Zamet's house from the church of the Petit-Saint-Antoine, she ate some fruit whilst walking in the garden, and was speedily after attacked with a burning sensation in the throat. "Take me away from this house,” said she, "I am poisoned." She died in convulsions, and was so disfigured by the terrible agony she endured, that the by-standers could not regard without horror the beautiful face, whose charms, a few hours before, were the admiration of the Court, and the envy of her sex. "The marriage," says a writer of the time, "of Henri Quatre with Marie de Médicis, had been already spoken of as probable. As Zamet was a subject of the Duke of Florence, his enemies accused him of the crime." (the death of Gabrielle) "They poisoned the favorite, because the King wished to make her his wife, and," the chronicler adds, with a naïveté the most matter-of-fact possible, "when we think of all the trouble her death prevented, we see what a capital service was rendered by it to King and country."

The

Hard by, there existed, in former times, two other hôtels, not less famous as the abodes of wit and beauty, than the hôtel de Zumet; I refer to the hôtels de Rambouillet and de Longueville. They have disappeared, devoured by the Ogre, Street-improvement. divinity of the Olympus de Rambouillet was the witty and beautiful Catherine Vivonne, Marquise de Rambouillet. "All is magnificence itself in her house," says Mademoiselle de Scuderi, "resplendent with lamps which you see nowhere else. The rooms are crowded with a thousand objects of luxury, which evidence the taste of her whose graceful hand has collected them. Flowers grouped every. where in profusion make perpetual spring in her house, and one believes oneself in a place of enchantment." La Bruyère has also given us a sketch of the Hôtel de Rambouillet. "There," he says, "one met a circle of both sexes, united by the bond of conversation, and the commerce d'esprit. They left to poor vulgar people the sad privilege of speaking intelligibly; something expressed in their society with but little clearness, brought on another still more obscure, which was in its turn eclipsed by some utter enigma, and was sure to be followed by continued applause." Scarron, Boileau, and Molière found a butt for their satire in the Hotel de Rambouillet, which, after having long enjoyed indisputable notoriety and disputa.

ble fame, gained in the end for its saloons the designation of the "Galerès du bel esprit." The celebrity of the Hotel de Longueville, on the other hand, had no share in the levity of wit or fashion. It was there that Cardinal de Retz wove his state intrigues. It was inhabited at one time by the Duke D'Anjou, who was later Henry the Third of France, and it was there he received the Polish Ambassadors after his election to the throne of Poland.

If the prolongation of the Rue de Rivoli has caused the ruin, and total removal of some interesting relics of antiquity, others again owe to it their preservation, and even their renovation. Thus, the splendid tower of the ancient church of Saint-Jacques-la-Boucherie, all that now remains of that edifice, has been repaired, beautified, and restored by the same hands which have ruthlessly overthrown other objects of interest, which were found to be obstacles to the eastern path of the Rue de Rivoli. The levelling of the soil in the neighbourhood of the tower Saint-Jacques, has disclosed the foundations of the first church which had been erected on that spot in the times of the Carlovingians. A second had been built on the same site; the third and last, the work of the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries, was destroyed in the Revolution of 1789. This last church was consecrated, before its completion, by the Bishop of Turin, who was entertained by the parishioners at a dinner which cost no more than seventy sous. The Chroniclers do not inform us if the banquet took place during Lent, but it is, under any circumstances, impossi ble to conceive the fact to have been as stated, notwithstanding that we take into account the greater value of seventy halfpence in those days than now. Amongst the chief benefactors of this church, figured one Nicholas Flamel. This personage, a scrivener by trade, managed to realize a fortune nowise in keeping with his not over lucrative calling, a great portion of which he spent in pious endowments. His wealth, and certain eccentricities and pretended wonders, caused him to be considered as quite a mysterious being. He had found the philosopher's stone. Vases, retorts, and other magical paraphernalia, were discovered in his house after his pretended death. I say pretended death, for Paul Lucas, a traveller of those days, a faithworthy man, who had seen the devil Asmodeus in Upper Egypt, met a dervish, no doubt at Asmodeus' country-house, who knew perfectly well the identical Nicholas Flamel and his wife, and who felt happy in being able to assure Monsieur Lucas that "tous les deur" were in the enjoyment of excellent health. You are no doubt

surprised that so pious a personage as Nicholas Flamel should have any rapport with Asmodeus or dervishes, but you must keep in mind that his contemporaries were not clear upon the point of his sanctity, and often regarded his munificent foundations as new-fangled (i.e. new-fangled, in the fourteenth-century sense of the word) devices of the enemy of man.

The Rue de Rivoli commences at the Palace of the Monarchy-the Tuileries. It ends at the Palace of the People-the Hôtel de Ville. The towns of Gaul, conquered by the Romans were, with few exceptions, classed as Prefectures, and governed as such by a Roman Prefect. In the sequel, it was found advisable to assuage popular turbulence by, in some measure, guaranteeing popular rights, and a magistracy was accordingly erected under the name of "Protectors of the City." These were elected by the body of the people from amongst the most distinguished citizens; these were tribunes of the people: amongst their attributions was the administration of justice in certain matters to which their jurisdiction was limited, as also the right of acquiring and disposing of property in the name of the City, and for its benefit. The first Parisian municipal magistrates were chosen amongst the Mercatores aquae, the same who consecrated those altars to the heathen gods, which I described in a former paper as preserved at the Hôtel de Cluny. To this hour a ship figures in the arms of Paris. We see in it the recognized cognizance of that company of merchants, whose vessels traded on the Seine, an inland fleet which was under the command of a Roman Prefect. The conquest of demi-Romanised Gaul by the Franks effected no fundamental change in the constitution of the corporation, and, even down to the seventeenth century, the successors of the ancient nautae of the time of Tiberius exercised nearly the same power, and enjoyed nearly the same privileges as were known to their predecessors. The council of citizens was presided over by two chief functionaries, the Pretot de Paris (named by the King) who administered justice in the Citycourt, and the Prévôt des Marchands, who was charged with the commercial and other metropolitan interests of the capital, and who was elected by the inhabitants. This latter was the Lord Mayor of his time, according to your ideas, and the seat of his authority was called, in the old French of the Middle Ages, the Parlouer, or Parloir, aux Bourjois, the designation being sufficiently indicative of the popular nature of the institution:-the citizens spoke publicly an all matters of common interest, and, no doubt, used their privilege

quite as much as modern aldermen. As the city increased in extent and importance, other trades than that of the Mercatores aquae claimed to be admitted into the corporation, which, under Philip Augustus, was an immense Trades-Union, the élite of the Bourgeoisie of Paris, organized both as a civil community and as a military establishment. Subsequently, under Louis the Eleventh, a review of the city train-bands took place, in which 80,000 armed men manœuvred, the predecessors of the National Guard of modern times. The place of sitting of the corporation was shifted from one locality to another, till, in 1359, Etienne Marcel, the most celebrated of all the Mayors of Paris, except, perhaps, Bailly, acquired for the eity a house which existed on the Place de Grève, and then and there founded the actual Hôtel de Ville, which, however, has required the lapse of centuries to reach its present proportions. The admirers of this city magistrate claim for him the title of the greatest reformer, his enemies that of the greatest demagogue, of his time. He fortified and beautified Paris, he introduced many useful measures with a firmness equal to his boldness, and administered the affairs of the corporation with unexampled success. On the other hand, the "Parloir" was agitated during his time by a perpetual tempest. We find much vulgar envy mixed up with well-grounded complaint. The corporation wish to pass sumptuary laws restraining the expenses of the rich, that is the very rich, the too rich, the richer than the rich bourgeois of these middle ages, so closely resembling their brothers of the nineteenth century, who "level upwards and tramble downwards." One evil of the time, which called for reformation, was the dilatory conduct of the magistrates. "They come late to court, dine at their ease, and make the pleaders spend their time in meditating." The following presents us with an interesting picture of the Hôtel de Ville in these far-back times. "The Great Chamber of the Parloir was strewn with mats in winter, and with green rushes in summer. Over the counter was suspended a Dieu de pitié," (a crucifix)" and an image of Saint Gregory. In the hall was a clock, which required winding every day. Divers chests, serving at once for money-safe and library, some shelves of wood, covered with black horn, and with clasps of silver, to keep together the papers and registers, a chain of iron from which hung defective measures which had been seized, some forms, and a few chairs an office apart for the Treasurer-such was the furniture and arrangement of the principal state-room in the People's Palace."

Under Louis the Eleventh, the corporation gave a banquet to that monarch and his court, on occasion of the marriage of one of his daughters. The old chronicles describe it, in French as antiquated as the cookery, as "un moult beau service de chair et de poisson.” In 1558, Henry the Second invited himself right royally to make merry with his liegès of the good city of Paris. The sons of many of the principal merchants officiated as waiters on the occasion, Unfortunately the banqueting-chamber was too small for the com. pany, and spoiled the fun. Again, the cannon of the city did so loyally and royally boom and thunder, that the royal steeds took unloyal fright, and very nearly upset the royal person. The singers were hoarse, the comedians, on account of the noise and confusion, could not go through their performance, and such was the disorder that many had to go away who could get nothing to drink after supper. We acquire no favorable opinion of the gallantry of the time, when, amongst the most grievous of the grievances of our chronicler, we find it complained of that, "ye demoiselles of ye citye" had seated themselves to their satisfaction "at ye hyghe ende of ye hall," whilst many "greate lordys" were obliged to sit beneath them. It would appear from this, that "ye demoiselles" were expected to resign their places (or rather not to have taken them at all) to "ye greate lordys." Preach that doctrine, nowadays!— Besides these extraordinary festivities, in the old times the court visited the city, every year, on St. John's Day. It was at once the privilege and duty of the King, or, in his absence, of a prince of the blood, to set fire with his own hand to the bon-fire on the Place de Grève. Afterwards came the city-banquet, which was not always as disorderly as that of which I gave you a sketch above, but which was generally conceived in too frolic a spirit for our sober days. The festivities on St. John's day were always attended with much cruelty, it having been the custom to burn an immense number of cats in the bon-fire. Deplus, an unhappy fox has become an historical personage, having been burned on one occasion, of which ancient annals make mention, "to give delygte unto hys majestie."

The Hotel de Ville has witnessed the stormiest events that have agitated Paris during many centuries, and, be sure, the Fronde has left its memories there. The day after the battle of the Faubourg St. Antoine, an assembly of the bourgeosie was convoked at the Hotel de Ville, and, even from early morning, numerous groups were observed on the Place de Grève, who forced those who passed there,