Excerpt from Paris, Vol. 2 of 2 Paris began to spread beyond the boundaries of Lutece from Roman times onwards. The rays emerging from this centre have absorbed all the villages in the neighbourhood, and for many miles in every direction all is now one vast and crowded city. But the island, where the first palaces were grouped around the fishermen's huts, has ever been as it were the axis of the kingdom, the point whence the laws were disseminated, and where the metropolitan cathedral has existed for fifteen centuries. In early times two islets broke the force of the river beyond the point of the Ile de la Cite. These were the Ile de la Gourdaine, or du Passeur aux Vaches, and the Ile aux Javiaux, or Ile aux Treilles. Upon the latter, which was then opposite the end of the royal gardens (march 11, r Jacques de Molay, grand master of the Templars, and Guy, dauphin d'auvergne. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.