less of a unit. At the first glance, one saw that it was divided into many masses, singularly distinct. First, to the eastward, in that part of the town which still takes its name from the marsh where Camulog�nes entangled C�sar, was a pile of palaces. The block extended to the very water’s edge. Four almost contiguous H�tels, Jouy, Sens, Barbeau, the house of the Queen, mirrored their slate peaks, broken with slender turrets, in the Seine.

These four edifices filled the space from the Rue des Nonaindi�res, to the abbey of the C�lestins, whose spire gracefully relieved their line of gables and battlements.

A few miserable, greenish hovels, hanging over the water in front of these sumptuous H�tels, did not prevent one from seeing the fine angles of their fa�ades, their large, square