Page 769 - les-miserables

the windows; all lights extinguished after ten o’clock. Gar-
dens, convents, timber-yards, marshes; occasional lowly
dwellings and great walls as high as the houses.
Such was this quarter in the last century. The Revolution
snubbed it soundly. The republican government demolished
and cut through it. Rubbish shoots were established there.
Thirty years ago, this quarter was disappearing under the
erasing process of new buildings. To-day, it has been utterly
blotted out. The Petit-Picpus, of which no existing plan has
preserved a trace, is indicated with sufficient clearness in
the plan of 1727, published at Paris by Denis Thierry, Rue
Saint-Jacques, opposite the Rue du Platre; and at Lyons, by
Jean Girin, Rue Merciere, at the sign of Prudence. Petit-Pic-
pus had, as we have just mentioned, a Y of streets, formed by
the Rue du Chemin-Vert-Saint-Antoine, which spread out
in two branches, taking on the left the name of Little Picpus
Street, and on the right the name of the Rue Polonceau. The
two limbs of the Y were connected at the apex as by a bar;
this bar was called Rue Droit-Mur. The Rue Polonceau end-
ed there; Rue Petit-Picpus passed on, and ascended towards
the Lenoir market. A person coming from the Seine reached
the extremity of the Rue Polonceau, and had on his right the
Rue Droit-Mur, turning abruptly at a right angle, in front of
him the wall of that street, and on his right a truncated pro-
longation of the Rue Droit-Mur, which had no issue and was
called the Cul-de-Sac Genrot.
It was here that Jean Valjean stood.
As we have just said, on catching sight of that black
silhouette standing on guard at the angle of the Rue Droit-

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