are but the legitimate successors of
the busy commerce carried on in this locality from the earliest times.
Louis XI authorized the construction, in the Rue de la Ferronnerie,
against the walls of the charniers, of little stalls or sheds to be let
to poor trades-people on condition that they did not display their
merchandise on the public street, very narrow in this quarter,--a
restriction which was speedily disregarded. "An ordinance of Henri II,
on highways, directed that this street should be widened, May 14, 1554;
it was not executed, and, fifty-six years later, to the day, Henri IV
was assassinated here, May 14, 1610." It may be remembered that the
temporary obstruction of the narrow street, which compelled the royal
coach to halt, gave Ravaillac his opportunity. In 1669, the charnier des
Lingeres was ordered to be demolished, and two years later it was
reconstructed to form the northern wall of the Rue de la Ferronnerie.

Even the very imperfect sanitary science of the Middle Ages recognized
this cemetery as a centre of infection, and innumerable complaints were
addressed to the civic authorities from reign to reign. Toward the
middle of the eighteenth century, these protestations became more
frequent, and various reports were made upon the subject. In 1737, the
Parlement, by a decree dated July 9th, appointed a committee of experts,
consisting of MM. Lemery and Hunault, physicians of the Hotel-Dieu, and
Geoffroy, _medecin chimiste_, all three of them members of the Academie
des Sciences, to report "upon the grounds for the complaints which have
been made for more than forty years, perhaps for more than a century,
upon the infection caused by the Cimetiere des Innocents." The report of
this commission, dated May 22, 1738, gives some lively details
concerning the manners and customs of the times that may be sought for
in vain in other and less candid records. "Two causes of these evil
odors may be observed,--the fecal matter which the inhabitants of the
neighboring houses throw into the cemetery, partly in a trench that has
been made along the sides of the houses that are on the Rue de la
Ferronnerie, and the infection from the graves during the time that they
are open and being refilled. The first cause is the most obvious; the
second does not seem to exercise any injurious effect on the health of
the neighborhood.... Do the exhalations from the cemetery augment in
time of epidemics?... The experience of the past