This charming market where flowers are replaced by birds on Sundays brightens up a square that is surrounded by austere government buildings. With regard to Louis Lépine, apart from the square and the competition for inventors that bear his name, some of the features of Parisian policemen that have made them famous all over the world (mainly thanks to the cinema) were down to him: the white truncheon, the whistle and the bicycle («hirondelles» as the police were known). A time gone by!