Diarium, description of Paris (1585 - 1586)

Because I have described the baths it is appropriate here, although they are situated at the other side of the town walls, to elaborate on the ruins of the aqueduct and to sketch it to give the most accurate impression of it.
At the first milestone outside the city in the village Arcueil )1 one sees the remains of a huge arch which the inhabitants, accustomed to relate all antiques to the Saracens, call the wall of the Saracens. To me the name of the village seems to be derived from this arch, it is situated at the other side of the Porte Saint Jacques, a little left of the royal road, in between two heights separated by a small river [La Bièvre] which water is very clear, in former times it will - I think - have discharged its water into the aqueduct.
More recent buildings are built against the ruins; the owner, it was told that he is a lover of antiquities, had them buttressed up with a stone wall. In the upper half one recognizes the curved part where the water had flown or the channel which contained the water.
It is obvious that these remains are those of an aqueduct which conducted the water from the one hill to the other over the valley; from there an underground conduit continued and came to light near the baths of Julianus [ ].
That it is not far from there, on the other side, is proved by two other ruins forms which I have made sketches )2, and at a stone's throw, on the top of the other hill, one sees half crumbled remains of a conduit which forms are equal to those discovered in 1544 in the Fabourg Saint Jacques [fabourg = suburb], just in the direction of the Baths )3; this conduit has a diameter of one foot and is made of very hard clay. This conduit calles fountain of Hercules, is cited in the verses of Jean Dorat from Limoges, poet of the king:

O Fons Arculii, sydere purior
Aestum marmoreo frigore qui domas
Quamvis arva furens Erigones canis
Lentis excoquat ignubus, etc )4

)1 Arcueil, Seine, district De Sceaux, canton of Villejuif - about the ruins of the aqueduct, see Lenoir, Statistique monumentale, pl V-VI, et Explication, p. 8-9; Belgrand, les Traveaux souterrains de Paris, III; les Anciennes eaux, p. 33-214
)2 See sketch. Buchelius has made two sketches of the aqueduct; the one which is not presented here, shows two separate pillars
)3 The discovery in 1544 is mentioned by Corrozet Antiquitez, uitg 1586 fol. 5 Ve). In December 1897, by excavations because of the construction of a sewer, at the corner of the rue Saint-Jacques and the rue Royer-Collard one has discovered three meter roman conduit and in August 1898, during similar work at the corner of the rue Saint-Jacques one has recognized the same conduit over a length of 3,5m; in this part of the water supply of the baths, the water seems to have flown in open air. Belgrand (Les anciennes eaux pag 65 with a picture of the conduit) presents other directions, one at the corner of the rue Saint-Jacques and the rue Gay-Lussac and an other close to the place of the former Saint-Benoît church. (Sellier, Rapport relativement aux découvertes faites dans Paris pendant les mois de juillet-septembre 1898. Ville de Paris. Commission du vieux Paris, Pocès-verbal, 1898, no 7, p.21, avec 2 pl.; 1899, p.178.)
)4 Odes, book 1 (J. Aurati Epigrammatum lib I, Parisiis, 1586, p. 194)