To such a height had the deposits of refuse outside the city walls attained, that, in 1525, during the panic that prevailed in Paris at the news of the captivity of François I, Jean Briçonnet, President of the Chambre des Comptes, secured the passage of an ordinance directing their razing, as from their summits an enemy could command the city walls! During this reign, however, considerable progress was made in cleansing and embellishing the capital; the king particularly enjoined upon the municipality the importance of paving and sweeping the streets, and a royal edict of November, 1539, prescribed minute regulations for the conduct of the inhabitants and the measures to be taken that would be considered very satisfactory, if enforced, at the present day. The paving of the streets, which had been commenced under Philippe-Auguste, had proceeded so slowly that in 1545 the greater portion of the Faubourg Saint-Germain was not yet paved, and the Cardinal de Tournon, Abbé of Saint-Germain-des-Prés, undertook the task. A decree of the court, March 30, 1545, ordered the commencement in the Rue de Seine; but when the cardinal desired to straighten the street lines also, he encountered a vigorous opposition on the part of the inhabitants. The Parlement was obliged to come to his assistance, and a decree of the 21st of the following October directed that all those who had valid reasons for opposing this measure should appear by means of a procureur, within the space of three days, to state them.
Five years later, another public-spirited citizen, Gilles de Froissez, an iron-master, proposed to bring the water of the Seine to aid in the great task of cleaning the city, and was instrumental in beginning this good work. In 1605, still another, François Miron, paid out of his own pocket for the facing with masonry of the égout de Ponceau from the Rue Saint-Denis to the Rue Saint-Martin. Various other open sewers were gradually transformed into covered ones, but under Louis XIV, while the total length of the first was only two thousand three hundred and fifty-three mètres, that of the latter, including the long _égout de ceinture_, or stream of Ménilmontant, was eight thousand and thirty-six.