of rule and a little leisure," he wrote while in exile on Saint Helena, "one would vainly search today for the old Paris; nothing would remain of it but vestiges." The medieval core and plan of Paris changed little during the restoration of the monarchy through the reign of King Louis-Philippe (1830–1848). It was the Paris of the narrow and winding streets and foul sewers described in the novels of Balzac and Victor Hugo. In 1833, the new prefect of the Seine under Louis-Philippe, Claude-Philibert Barthelot, comte de Rambuteau, made modest improvements to the sanitation and circulation of the city. He constructed new sewers, though they still emptied directly into the Seine, and a better water supply system. He constructed 180 kilometres of sidewalks, a new street, rue Lobau; a new bridge over the Seine, the pont Louis-Philippe; and cleared an open space around the Hôtel de Ville. He built a new street the length of the Île de la Cité and three additional streets across it: rue d'Arcole, rue de la Cité and rue Constantine. To access the central market at Les Halles, he built a wide new street (today's rue Rambuteau) and began work on the Boulevard Malesherbes. On the Left Bank, he built a new street, rue Soufflot, which cleared space around the Panthéon, and began work on the rue des Écoles, between the École Polytechnique and the Collège de France. Rambuteau wanted to do more, but his budget and powers were limited. He did not have the power to easily expropriate property to build new streets, and the first law which required minimum health standards for Paris residential buildings was not passed until April 1850, under Louis-Napoléon Bonaparte, then president of the Second French Republic. Louis-Napoléon Bonaparte comes to power, and the rebuilding of Paris begins (1848–1852) King Louis-Philippe was overthrown in the February Revolution of 1848. On 10 December 1848, Louis-Napoléon Bonaparte, the nephew of Napoléon Bonaparte, won the first direct presidential elections ever held in France with an overwhelming 74.2 percent of the votes cast. He was elected largely because of his famous name, but also because of his promise to try to end poverty and improve the lives of ordinary people. Though he had been born in Paris, he had lived very little in the city; from the age of seven, he had lived in exile in Switzerland, England, and the United States,