Jurisprudence) granting the Bachelor of Laws was established in Saint-Denis. Construction of the Saint-Denis Cathedral was begun in 1829 and completed in 1832. The theatre of Saint-Denis was built in 1835 with loggias and balconies (it was later destroyed by fire in 1919). That same year, construction of the Palais législatif ("Legislative Palace") was begun and completed in 1837: the palace housed the Colonial Council (Conseil colonial), the legislative assembly of Bourbon Island; the palace was later turned over in 1855 to the newly created , the first natural history museum in the Indian Ocean. In 1843, following the example of Mauritius where horse races had become popular among French colonial planters, a racecourse was inaugurated at La Redoute, now transformed into a stadium. Construction of the old was started in 1846 and the building was inaugurated in 1860. The , a wrought iron structure, was built between 1864 and 1866. The first cholera pandemic struck Saint-Denis in the beginning of 1820: cholera had arrived from Calcutta in Mauritius the year before, and despite strict orders from governor Milius forbidding any contact with Mauritius, one ship arriving from Mauritius evaded the orders and brought cholera to Saint-Denis. The authorities reacted quickly as soon as the disease was discovered in town by isolating sick people, establishing a military cordon sanitaire, and evacuating the rest of the population from the city. As a result, cholera was contained within the city limits and killed only 178 people (whereas it spread all over Mauritius and killed thousands of people there). In 1841, the famous poet Charles Baudelaire, then 20 year-old, who had been sent on a voyage to Calcutta, India by his family in the hope of ending his dissolute habits, landed in Saint-Denis and stayed on Bourbon Island for 45 days, before deciding to return to metropolitan France without reaching India. In 1847, the return to Bourbon Island of the Catholic Apostolic Vice-Prefect of the island, Alexandre Monnet, an abolitionist who had worked for the evangelization of Bourbon's Black slaves and was returning from a trip to Europe where he had been celebrated in Paris and Rome for his work in favor of Black slaves, triggered two days of protests in Saint-Denis among the White colonists, who insulted the Apostolic Vice-Prefect without governor intervening to stop the turmoil. Due to strong opposition, and without any local support, Father Monnet, nicknamed the Father of