Rue Dauphine, named in honour of the son of Henri IV, later Louis XIII, dates from 1607. Most of the houses date from that century or the century following. Rue Mazet, opening out of it at No. 49, was famed in past days for the old inn and coaching station--"le Cheval Blanc." It existed from 1612 to 1906. Near it was the restaurant Magny, where literary lions of the early years of the nineteenth century--G. Sand, Flaubert, the Goncourts, etc.--met and dined. Some old houses still stand there.

Rue St-André-des-Arts, where in ancient days dwelt the makers and vendors of "arcs," i.e. bows, and along which the pious passed to pray at St-André on abbey territory for those who had suffered death by burning, (_les Arsis_) was in long-gone times a vine-bordered path reaching to the city wall. It was known at one time as Rue St-Germain, and was a great shoemaking street. It is rich in vestiges of the past. Almost every house has interesting features. The modern Lycée Fénelon at No. 45, the first girls' _lycée_ in Paris, stands on the site of the ancient _hôtel_ of the ducs d'Orléans. No. 52, hôtel du Tillet-de-la-Bussière. Nos. 47-49, on the site of the ancient mansion of the Kings of Navarre and of the Vieuville, of which some traces are still seen. At No. 11, a house on the site of the _place_ where stood the old church, Gounod was born in 1818. Opening out of it is the Passage du Commerce-St-André, cut in 1776, across the site of Philippe-Auguste's great wall of which, at No. 4, we find the base of a tower, and in the Cour de Rohan, more correctly perhaps Rouen, a very perfect fragment of the city rampart. The archbishops of Rouen had an _hôtel_ here, and the vestiges we see before us are those of a mansion built on its site by King Henri II for Diane de Poitiers. Rue des Grands-Augustins, in part on the site of an ancient Augustine convent, was, in the thirteenth century, Rue l'Abbé de St-Denis. Many of its houses show interesting traces of the past. The reputed restaurant Lapérouse at No. 1 is a Louis XV _hôtel_. At No. 5 and No. 7 remains of the ancient hôtel d'Hercule, noted for its mythological paintings and tapestries, once the Paris abode of the princess of Savoie Carignan. At No. 3 Rue Pont de Lodi, opening at No. 6, we see traces of the convent refectory. Littré was born at No. 21 (1808). In 1841 Heine lived at No. 25. Sardou in his youth at No. 26. Augustin Thierry lived for ten years in a house near the quay.

Historic Paris — Part 78