Scene · 1870s-1880s
Collège Rollin (lycée Jacques-Decour)
Address · 12, avenue Trudaine, 75009 Paris
Metro · Anvers (2)
Today · In operation. Collège-lycée Jacques-Decour, a working school; seen from outside.
The story
The Collège Rollin, successor to the old Collège Sainte-Barbe, left the Latin Quarter in 1876 for large new buildings on avenue Trudaine, at the foot of Montmartre. It became the Lycée Rollin in 1919 and, since the Liberation, has borne the name of Jacques Decour, a teacher and Resistance fighter shot in 1942. The school faces the square d'Anvers. The move accompanied the rapid urbanization of southern Montmartre, and the school took in the sons of the local bourgeoisie. Papus completed part of his secondary education here before studying medicine.
Churton recalls that Papus was a pupil here. Later, living modestly near the Gare de l'Est, he gathered five or six former Rollin classmates on Sunday mornings to talk literature and philosophy: Georges Polti, Émile Gary and above all Lucien Mauchel, the future bookseller Chamuel. Michelet ironically compared this group to a Pythagorean school. These school friendships gave rise to the Librairie du Merveilleux and the journal L'Initiation. Papus remained close to these companions all his life.
The building, still occupied by a public secondary school, can be seen from avenue Trudaine. Together with number 20 on the same avenue, where Guaita lived, and the Auberge du Clou a little further on, it forms a small area where several of the book's addresses are concentrated. It makes a good starting point for a short walk through this neighborhood, where the great figures of Parisian occultism lived, studied or met between 1880 and 1900. The nearby square d'Anvers offers a place to rest.