In the Shadow of the Guillotine by Rafael Sabatini

ANGÈLE made her way briskly through the by-streets of the section -- the section called after Mucius Scaevola by those noisome patriots who dreamed of implanting the departed glories of old Rome on the bloody dunghill they had made of Paris.

She came out into the more spacious Rue Vaugirard and picked her way daintily through the unscavengered filth of it past the old seminary of St. Louis and the Luxembourg. The ancient and stately palace clanged and clattered now as if the forge of old Vulcan himself were at work within it.