Three notable churches stand in the immediate vicinity of these three palaces. The ancient St-Germain-l'Auxerrois, St-Roch, erewhile its chapel of ease, and the Oratoire. St-Germain opposite the Louvre was the Chapel Royal of past ages. Its bells pealed for royal weddings, announced the birth of princes, tolled for royal deaths, rang on every other occasion of great national importance. Its biggest bell sounded the death-knell of the Protestants on the fatal eve of St-Bartholomew's Day, 1572. No part of the fine old church as its stands to-day dates back as a whole beyond the fifteenth century, but a chapel stood on the site as early as the year 560. A baptistery and a school were built close to the chapel about a century later, and this early foundation was the eldest daughter of Notre-Dame--the Paris Cathedral. After its destruction by the invading Normans, it was rebuilt as a fine church by Robert le Pieux, in the first years of the eleventh century, and no doubt many of its ancient stones found a place in the walls of successive rebuildings and restorations. The beautiful Gothic edifice is rich in ancient glass, marvellous woodwork, pictures, statuary and historic memorials.
[Illustration: L'ÉGLISE ST-GERMAIN-L'AUXERROIS]
The first stone of St-Roch, in the Rue St-Honoré, was laid by Louis XIV, in 1653, but the church was not finished till nearly a century later. In the walls of its Renaissance façade we see marks of the grape-shot--the first ever used--that poured from the guns of the soldiers of the young Corsican officer, Napoléon Buonaparte, in the year 1795. Buonaparte had taken up his position opposite the church, facing the insurgent _sectionnaires_ grouped on its broad steps. The fight that followed was the turning-point in the early career of the young officer fated to become for a time master of the city and of France. St-Roch is especially interesting on account of its many monuments of notable persons of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries and its groups of statuary. The Calvary of the Catechists' Chapel, as seen through the opened shutters over the altar in the Chapel of the Adoration, is of striking effect.
The Oratory, Rue de Rivoli and Rue St-Honoré, was built during the early years of the seventeenth century as the mother-church of the Society of the Oratorians, founded in 1611, and served at times as the Chapel Royal. The Revolution broke up the Society of the Oratorians, their church was desecrated, secularized. In 1810, it was given to the Protestants and has been ever since the principal French Protestant Church of Paris. The statue of Coligny on the Rue de Rivoli side is modern--1889.