[Illustration: THE ENTRANCE TO THE COURTYARD OF THE OLD GRAND SÉMINAIRE (18th century)]
Successively occupied since 1790 by the District Council, a free secondary school, and by the Russians in 1814-1815, the buildings were handed over to the Grand Séminaire in 1822. Since the separation of the Church and State in 1905, they have been fitted up as a Museum.
The Museum was struck at the beginning of the bombardment on September 4, 1914, several pictures in the Modern Gallery being destroyed. Later, it was again hit by shells, but the greater part of the collections had already been removed to a place of safety.
[Illustration: THE OLD GRAND SÉMINAIRE (MUSEUM)]
[Illustration: THE BED IN WHICH NAPOLEON SLEPT IN 1814 (_In ruined house at No. 18 Rue de Vesle._)]
_Continue along the Rue Chanzy, which skirts the_ =Theatre= (1873), of which only the walls remain. _Take the Rue de Vesle (first street on the left. See Itinerary, p. 61)._
Among the ruins of this street, in the yard of No. 18 on the left, is a building of which only the ground-floor and front with large windows and spacious dormers remain.
It was there that Napoleon I. slept after his return to Rheims. His room had been preserved exactly as it was in 1814 (_see p. 8_).
At No. 27 are vestiges of the old =Hôtel Levesque de Pouilly=. Inside the court there was a 16th century house, the residence of a family which furnished Rheims with some remarkable administrators, chief among whom was _Levesque de Pouilly_, "lieutenant of the inhabitants." Among the celebrated guests received by him were Voltaire and Madame du Châtelet (1749). In a letter to him, Lord Bolingbroke wrote: "_I know but three men who are worthy of governing the nation: You, Pope and myself._"
[Illustration: THE VAULTING AND BELFRY OF THE CHURCH OF ST. JACQUES (_Cliché LL._)]
_On the right, between Nos. 44 and 46, is the Rue St. Jacques._
_Follow the Rue de Vesle to the end, where the_ =Paris Gate= _stands, about 1 km. from the entrance to the Rue St. Jacques._
This Gate replaced the Vesle Gate which formerly abutted on the river. In consequence of the growth of the city it was built in the _faubourg_ about 1845. Its beautiful wrought-iron work (_photo opposite_), by the local master-locksmiths Lecoq and Revel, was erected by the City in 1774, at the time of the consecration of Louis XVI.