Personally, I remember that from Angelica.
The poor and homeless of Paris during the reign of King Louis XIV, from 1654 to 1715, lived in a terrible slum in the city center, where the unemployed and disadvantaged survived by begging, theft and robbery. Many of them on the streets of the city, during the day, in the form of cripples and invalids, disfigured by physical disabilities or diseases, begged in market squares and crowded places near churches and cathedrals in the hope of arousing sympathy and receiving alms. But with the onset of evening, when they returned home to the slums and they no longer needed to feign illness, they miraculously "cured" of these ailments. The blind man could see again, the lame man could jump.
Therefore, one of the poorest and most famous slums in 17th century Paris became known as the Chicken of Miracles, or the Courtyard of Miracles.
In the late 18th and early 19th centuries, large slums were demolished during the reconstruction of Paris during the French Revolution. But the "Court of Wonders" remained in history, it inspired two famous novels by Victor Hugo, "Les Miserables" and "The Hunchback of Notre Dame", as well as in the work of Anne and Serge Golon "Angelica". In The Hunchback of Notre Dame, Hugo describes the slums as “a gutter of vice and beggary, vagrancy that can spill over the streets of the capital […] the huge locker rooms of the actors of this comedy, who play robbery, prostitution and murder on the cobbled streets of Paris."
Rue du Temple on the site where the "Court of Miracles" was previously located.
In general, there were several Yards of Miracles. The main miracle in these Courtyards happened every evening, when all the rabble after a "hard day" returned to their homes. The most famous Courtyard of Wonders had about 500 families and overlooked the rue Saint-Denis in the area of the Passage du Coeur.
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Only the police prefecture, created in 1667, located on the famous Que d'Orfevre, was able to cope with it. Police lieutenant La Rainey became especially famous for his raids in the Courtyards of Wonders. Meeting a crowd armed with iron bars and blunderbuss, he said something like this: “I could send you all to the galleys. But I'm sorry for you. Today the walls of your barracks will be torn down, and I give you exactly one hour to get away … But note: the last twelve will pay for all. Six will be hanged on the spot, six will receive 20 years of hard labor! La Rainey always kept his word, so after 30 minutes the Courtyard was empty …
The criminal hierarchy had its own clans: "les Courtauds de Boutange" - beggars who worked on the streets of the capital only in winter; "Les capons" - thieves and robbers who worked alone in taverns, sometimes helped by students who distracted the attention of the crowd, yelling as if they had just been robbed; "Les Franc-mitoux" - sick-pretenders, whose artificial mutilation could deceive even an experienced doctor; "Les Hubains" - holders of false testimonies that they were healed from madness by Saint Hubert himself and are now collecting donations to go on a pilgrimage and thank the saint for their salvation; "Les Rifodes" - fire victims who, accompanied by their wives and children, were begging around the city - showing the pitying public a certificate of fire; "Les Sabouteux" - the possessed epileptics who, rolling on the ground foaming at the mouth,frightened the townspeople with fits of convulsions or sudden violent demonic possession.
Doubts about the reality of the "courtyards of miracles" have been expressed for a long time, many considered them a literary invention. The historian André Rigaud has argued that Henri Sowa-dl's story is a detailed borrowing of the story of the writer Olivier Chereau. The latter, in turn, most likely borrowed a plot from the stories of a certain Pechon de Ruby, who was the first to describe such a "court of miracles" in 1596 in "La Vie genereuse des mercelots, gueux et boemiens" ("The rich life of crooks, vagabonds and bohemians", published in Lyon).
Pachon de Ruby has stated that he spent years studying the lives of these people, their language, revered saints, professional and social hierarchy. Understandably, his descriptions are sympathetic; the society he painted hates all power and despises money, considering it a trap for freedom. The main conditions for "real life" were considered freedom from any work and the right to live anywhere on earth: the bohemia of Paris became a kind of progenitor of the anarchist groups of the 19th century, which declared war on labor, family and religion.
The streets with the most sinister reputation have survived to this day. Since the 15th century, Bolshaya Street of the Rig, as well as the adjacent Small Street of the Rag, have been known as "coupe-gorges": places where throats are cut, where criminals of all stripes live by their own laws. Little has changed in this district since then: on September 21, I myself watched as in broad daylight and in front of a frightened crowd of passers-by, two thugs pimps cut a girl's face with knives.