THE PLACE DE GRÈVE.
There to-day but a very of the Place de Grève, such as it then; it in the little turret, which the north of the Place, and which, already in the plaster which with paste the lines of its sculpture, would soon have disappeared, by that of new houses which so all the façades of Paris.
The who, like ourselves, the Place de Grève without a of and on that two of the time of Louis XV., can easily in their minds the of to which it belonged, and again entire in it the Gothic place of the century.
It was then, as it is to-day, an trapezoid, on one by the quay, and on the other three by a series of lofty, narrow, and houses. By day, one the of its edifices, all in or wood, and already complete of the different of the Middle Ages, from the to the century, from the which had to the arch, to the Roman semicircle, which had been by the ogive, and which still occupies, it, the of that house de la Tour Roland, at the of the Place upon the Seine, on the of the with the Tannerie. At night, one nothing of all that of buildings, the black of the roofs, their of the place; for one of the the of that time, and the of the present day, in the façades which looked upon the places and streets, and which were then gables. For the last two centuries the houses have been round.
In the centre of the of the Place, rose a and construction, of three in juxtaposition. It was called by three names which its history, its destination, and its architecture: “The House of the Dauphin,” Charles V., when Dauphin, had it; “The Marchandise,” it had as town hall; and “The Pillared House” (domus ad piloria), of a series of large which the three stories. The city there all that is for a city like Paris; a in which to pray to God; a plaidoyer, or room, in which to hearings, and to repel, at need, the King’s people; and under the roof, an full of artillery. For the of Paris were aware that it is not to pray in every conjuncture, and to for the of the city, and they had always in reserve, in the of the town hall, a good arquebuses. The Grève had then that which it to-day from the ideas which it awakens, and from the town of Dominique Bocador, which has replaced the Pillared House. It must be that a permanent and a pillory, “a and a ladder,” as they were called in that day, by in the centre of the pavement, not a little to to be away from that place, where so many beings full of life and health have agonized; where, fifty years later, that of Saint Vallier was to have its birth, that terror of the scaffold, the most of all it comes not from God, but from man.
It is a idea (let us in passing), to think that the death penalty, which three hundred years ago still with its iron wheels, its gibbets, and all its of torture, permanent and to the pavement, the Grève, the Halles, the Place Dauphine, the Cross du Trahoir, the Marché Pourceaux, that Montfaucon, the Sergents, the Place Chats, the Porte Saint-Denis, Champeaux, the Porte Baudets, the Porte Saint Jacques, without the of the provosts, the of the chapters, of the abbots, of the priors, who had the of life and death,—without the in the river Seine; it is to-day, after having all the pieces of its armor, its luxury of torment, its of and fancy, its for which it every five years a leather at the Grand Châtelet, that of almost from our laws and our cities, from to code, from place to place, has no longer, in our Paris, any more than a of the Grève,—than a guillotine, furtive, uneasy, shameful, which always of being in the act, so it after having its blow.
