. is worse than Claudian, Madame Dubarry is better than
Messalina. Paris combines in an unprecedented type, which has existed
and which we have elbowed, Grecian nudity, the Hebraic ulcer, and the
Gascon pun. It mingles Diogenes, Job, and Jack-pudding, dresses up a
spectre in old numbers of the Constitutional, and makes Chodruc Duclos.

Although Plutarch says: the tyrant never grows old, Rome, under Sylla as
under Domitian, resigned itself and willingly put water in its wine. The
Tiber was a Lethe, if the rather doctrinary eulogium made of it by Varus
Vibiscus is to be credited: Contra Gracchos Tiberim habemus, Bibere
Tiberim, id est seditionem oblivisci. Paris drinks a million litres of
water a day, but that does not prevent it from occasionally beating the
general alarm and ringing the tocsin.

With that exception, Paris is amiable. It accepts everything royally;
it is not too particular about its Venus; its Callipyge is Hottentot;
provided that it is made to laugh, it condones; ugliness cheers it,
deformity provokes it to laughter, vice diverts it; be eccentric and
you may be an eccentric; even hypocrisy, that supreme cynicism, does
not disgust it; it is so literary that it does not hold its nose before
Basile, and is no more scandalized by the prayer of Tartuffe than Horace
was repelled by the "hiccup" of Priapus. No trait of the universal face
is lacking in the profile of Paris. The bal Mabile is not the polymnia
dance of the Janiculum, but the dealer in ladies' wearing apparel there
devours the lorette with her eyes, exactly as the procuress Staphyla
lay in wait for the virgin Planesium. The Barriere du Combat is not
the Coliseum, but people are as ferocious there as though Caesar were
looking on. The Syrian hostess has more grace than Mother Saguet,
but, if Virgil haunted the Roman wine-shop, David d'Angers, Balzac
and Charlet have sat at the tables of Parisian taverns. Paris reigns.
Geniuses flash forth there, the red tails prosper there. Adonai passes
on his chariot with its twelve wheels of thunder and lightning; Silenus
makes his entry there on his ass. For Silenus read Ramponneau.

Paris is the synonym of Cosmos, Paris is Athens, Sybaris, Jerusalem,
Pantin. All civilizations are there in an abridged form, all barbarisms
also. Paris would greatly regret it if it had not a guillotine.

A little of the Place de Greve is a good thing. What would all that
eternal festival be without this seasoning? Our laws are