[Illustration: HÔTEL DE BEAUVAIS, RUE FRANÇOIS-MIRON]
Rue François-Miron running east, its lower end the ancient Rue St-Antoine, shows us the _orme_, figured in the ironwork of all its balconies. This end of the street was known in olden days as Rue du Pourtour St-Gervais, then as Rue du Monceau St-Gervais, referring to the wide stretch of waste ground in the vicinity which, unbuilt upon for centuries, was a favourite site for festive gatherings and tournaments. It records the name of the Prévôt des Marchands of the sixteenth century to whom was due the façade of the Hôtel de Ville, burnt in 1871. Its houses are for the most part ancient. No. 13, quaint and gabled, fifteenth century. No. 82 the old mansion of President Henault. No. 68 hôtel de Beauvais, associated with many historic personages and events, has Gothic cellars which of yore formed part of the monastastic house where Tasso wrote his great poem "Jerusalem Delivered." The walls above those fine cellars were knocked down in the third decade of the seventeenth century and replaced in 1655 by those we see there now, built as the hôtel de Beauvais, destined to see many changes. At the Revolution the grand old mansion was for a time a coach-office, then a house let out in flats. Mozart is said to have stayed there in 1763.
Behind the church is the old Rue des Barres with an ancient inscription and traces of an ancient chapel. The sordid but picturesque Rue de l'Hôtel de Ville was known for centuries as Rue de la Mortellerie, from the _morteliers_, or masons who had settled there. In the dread cholera year 1832 the inhabitants saw in the name of their street a sinister reference to the word _mort_ and demanded its change. Every house has some feature of old-time interest. Beneath No. 56 there is a Gothic cellar, once, tradition says, a chapel founded by Blanche de France, grand-daughter of Philippe-le-Bel, who died in 1358. At No. 39 we see the narrowest street in Paris, Rue du Paon Blanc, erewhile known as the "descente à la rivière." Nos. 8-2 is the venerable hôtel de Sens (_see_ p. 117).
In Rue Geoffroy l'Asnier, between Rue de l'Hôtel de Ville and Rue François-Miron, thirteenth century, we find among many other vestiges of old times the fine seventeenth-century door of hôtel Chalons at No. 26. In Rue de Jouy of the same period and interest, at No. 12 and No. 14, dependencies of l'hôtel Beauvais; at No. 7 l'hôtel d'Aumont, built in 1648 on the site of the house where Richelieu was born. At No. 9, the École Sophie-Germain, the ancient hôtel de Fourcy, previously inhabited by a rich bourgeois family.