[Illustration: CASTEL DE LA REINE BLANCHE]
Rue Croulebarbe, once on the banks of the Bièvre, has an old-world, village-like aspect. The buildings bordering the broad Avenue des Gobelins are devoid of interest, but beneath several of them important Roman remains have been found, and besides the old streets running into the avenue in the immediate vicinity of the Gobelins Factory, we find at intervals other old streets and passages with many interesting vestiges; at No. 37, the Cour des Rames. The city gate St-Marcel stood in past days across the avenue where the house No. 45 now stands. In Rue Le Brun we see the remains of the _hôtel_ where, in the early years of the eighteenth century, dwelt Jean Julienne, the master of the Gobelins. Rue du Banquier shows many curious old-time houses.
In Rue de la Glacière on the western side of the arrondissement, so named in long-gone days from an ice-house furnished from the Bièvre, and in the short streets leading out of it, we find old houses here and there. Rue de la Tannerie was until quite modern times Rue des Anglaises from the couvent des Filles Anglaises, founded at Cambrai, established here in 1664--the chief duty of the nuns being to offer prayers for the conversion of England to Romanism! Disturbed at the Revolution, they returned to their own land and the convent became a prison under the Terror. At No. 28 of this old street we see vestiges of the chapel cloisters.
Covering a large area in the east of this arrondissement is the hospice known as La Salpétrière. In long-past days a powder magazine stood on the site: traces of that old arsenal may still be seen in the hospital wash-house. The foundation of the hospice dates from Louis XIII, as a house for the reception of beggars. The present structure, the work of the architect Vau, was built in the seventeenth century, destined for the destitute and the mad. The fine chapel was built a few years later. At the close of the century a woman's prison was added, whither went many of the Convulsionists of St. Médard (_see_ p. 150). Mme Lamotte concerned in the _affaire du collier_ was shut up here. And in a scene of the well-known operette Manon Lescaut is shown within its walls. In September, 1792, the Revolutionary mob broke into the prison, slew the criminals, opened the doors to the light women shut up there. We see before us the "Cour des Massacres." Then in 1883 la Salpétrière was organized as the "Hospice de la Vieillesse-Femmes." There are five thousand beds. In 1908 the new hospital de la Pitié was built in its grounds.