Madame Roland: A Biographical Study

Since the days when all of the city of Paris, save a few mills, fortresses, and donjon-towers, was to be found on the Île de la Cité, the western end of that island has been the quarter of the gold and silver smiths. Here, in the olden times, when this part of the island was laid out in gardens and paths, the sellers of ornaments and metal vessels arranged their wares on the ground or in rude booths; later when peaked-roofed, latticed-faced buildings filled the space, these same venders opened their workshops in them; later still, when good King Henry IV. filled up this western end, built the Pont Neuf and put up the two fine façades of red brick and stone—mates for the arcades of the Place Royale—the same class continued here their trade. Even to-day, he who knows Paris thoroughly seeks the neighborhood of the Quai de l’Horloge and the Quai des Orfèvres for fine silverware and jewels.

Among the master engravers who in the latter part of the eighteenth century plied their trade in this quarter was one Pierre Gatien Phlipon. His shop was in one of the houses of King Henry’s façade—a house still standing almost intact, although the majority of them have been replaced or rebuilt so as to be unrecognizable—that facing the King’s statue on the west and looking on the Quai de l’Horloge on the north.