In 1560, the houses of the rue de la Vieille-Pelleterie skirted the left bank of the Seine, between the pont Notre-Dame and the pont au Change.  A public footpath and the houses then occupied the space covered by the present roadway.  Each house, standing almost in the river, allowed its dwellers to get down to the water by stone or wooden stairways, closed and protected by strong iron railings or wooden gates, clamped with iron.  The houses, like those in Venice, had an entrance on terra firma and a water entrance.  At the moment when the present sketch is published, only one of these houses remains to recall the old Paris of which we speak, and that is soon to disappear; it stands at the corner of the Petit-Pont, directly opposite to the guard-house of the Hotel-Dieu.

Formerly each dwelling presented on the river-side the fantastic appearance given either by the trade of its occupant and his habits, or by the originality of the exterior constructions invented by the proprietors to use or abuse the Seine.  The bridges being encumbered with more mills than the necessities of navigation could allow, the Seine formed as many enclosed basins as there were bridges.  Some of these basins in the heart of old Paris would have offered precious scenes and tones of color to painters.  What a forest of crossbeams supported the mills with their huge sails and their wheels!  What strange effects were produced by the piles or props driven into the water to project the upper floors of the houses above the stream!  Unfortunately, the art of genre painting did not exist in those days, and that of engraving was in its infancy.  We have therefore lost that curious spectacle, still offered, though in miniature, by certain provincial towns, where the rivers are overhung with wooden houses, and where, as at Vendome, the basins, full of water grasses, are enclosed by immense iron railings, to isolate each proprietor’s share of the stream, which extends from bank to bank.

The name of this street, which has now disappeared from the map, sufficiently indicates the trade that was carried on in it.  In those days the merchants of each class of commerce, instead of dispersing themselves about the city, kept together in the same neighborhood and protected themselves mutually.  Associated in corporations which limited their number, they were still further united into guilds by the Church.  In this way prices were maintained.  Also, the masters were not at the mercy of their workmen, and did not obey their whims as they do to-day; on the contrary, they made them their children, their apprentices, took care of them, and taught them the intricacies of the trade.  In order to become a master, a workman had to produce a masterpiece, which was always dedicated to the saint of his guild.  Will any one dare to say that the absence of competition destroyed the desire for perfection, or lessened the beauty of products?  What say you, you whose admiration for the masterpieces of past ages has created the modern trade of the sellers of bric-a-brac?