how that throng of narrow and tortuous streets (to-day
the Latin Quarter), those bunches of houses which, spread out in every
direction from the top of this eminence, precipitated themselves in
disorder, and almost perpendicularly down its flanks, nearly to the
water's edge, having the air, some of falling, others of clambering up
again, and all of holding to one another. A continual flux of a thousand
black points which passed each other on the pavements made everything
move before the eyes; it was the populace seen thus from aloft and afar.

Lastly, in the intervals of these roofs, of these spires, of these
accidents of numberless edifices, which bent and writhed, and jagged in
so eccentric a manner the extreme line of the University, one caught a
glimpse, here and there, of a great expanse of moss-grown wall, a thick,
round tower, a crenellated city gate, shadowing forth the fortress;
it was the wall of Philip Augustus. Beyond, the fields gleamed green;
beyond, fled the roads, along which were scattered a few more suburban
houses, which became more infrequent as they became more distant. Some
of these faubourgs were important: there were, first, starting from la
Tournelle, the Bourg Saint-Victor, with its one arch bridge over the
Bievre, its abbey where one could read the epitaph of Louis le Gros,
_epitaphium Ludovici Grossi_, and its church with an octagonal spire,
flanked with four little bell towers of the eleventh century (a similar
one can be seen at Etampes; it is not yet destroyed); next, the Bourg
Saint-Marceau, which already had three churches and one convent; then,
leaving the mill of the Gobelins and its four white walls on the left,
there was the Faubourg Saint-Jacques with the beautiful carved cross
in its square; the church of Saint-Jacques du Haut-Pas, which was then
Gothic, pointed, charming; Saint-Magloire, a fine nave of the fourteenth
century, which Napoleon turned into a hayloft; Notre-Dame des Champs,
where there were Byzantine mosaics; lastly, after having left behind,
full in the country, the Monastery des Chartreux, a rich edifice
contemporary with the Palais de Justice, with its little garden divided
into compartments, and the haunted ruins of Vauvert, the eye fell, to
the west, upon the three Roman spires of Saint-Germain des Pres. The
Bourg Saint-Germain, already a large community, formed fifteen or twenty
streets in the rear; the pointed bell tower of Saint-Sulpice marked
one corner of the