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Show Street of the Irish. The next time you visit Paris and are in the neighborhood of the Pantheon ask a gendarme to tell you where to find the street of the Irish. As you approach the Pantheon, it is the first to the right and the second to the left, as the London "bobby" would say, and It Is only two minutes' walk through narrow, clean, picturesque pictur-esque streets to the college. A lamp Juts out at the corner, and on the wall is this sign, "Rue des Irlandois." Turn to your left and you will see above the entrance, In black bas relief, a crown, and beneath it the harps of Ireland. The guide will know by the buttons on your clothes or the shape of your shoes who you want to see and will run and call the father superior, a fine-looking man of 60, who will take you through the old buildings and tell you about the place in English with that charming accent of the educated Dublin man. He will point out and explain to you the two black marble tablets at the entrance. One tells of the founder of the college, John Sue. who at the Restoration Res-toration and downfall of James II fled to France and was given the old college col-lege of the Lombards. Here, with full religious freedom, he established a col lege for the training ?; priests. It flourished until the breaking out of the French revolution, when it was closed for a time, the brothers going back to Ireland. In 1804, by permission of Napoleon I, it was reopened, and the work went on uninterrupted. It was closed again recently re-cently when church and state were divorced. di-vorced. Now these men are quietly awaiting the decision of the government govern-ment as to the fate of their college. During the Franco-Prussian waj when the Germans bombarded Paris, many shells whistled above this building, build-ing, and not a few dropped in the court yard. Here the wounded French soldiers sol-diers were cared for by the fathers, who turned the place into a hospital. On one of the tablets in the entrance are chiseled the names of those who died lure for their country, nursed and comforted to the end. Catholic Sun. |