In 1658, at the corner of the streets Git-le-Coeur and Le Hurepoix (the site of the latter being now occupied by the Quai des Augustins as far as Pont Saint-Michel), stood the great mansion which Francis I had bought and fitted up for the Duchesse d'Etampes.

It was at this period if not in ruins at least beginning to show the ravages of time.

Its rich interior decorations had lost their splendour and become antiquated.
Fashion had taken up its abode in the Marais, near the Place Royale, and it was thither that profligate women and celebrated beauties now enticed the humming swarm of old rakes and young libertines.

Not one of them all would have thought of residing in the mansion, or even in the quarter, wherein the king's mistress had once dwelt.

It would have been a step downward in the social scale, and equivalent to a confession that their charms were falling in the public estimation.