onton_
or pediment, public or private,--_Liberte._ _Egalite._ _Fraternite._ The
harassed citizen of the new republic looked up, or down, or sideways, at
this official assurance of the sentiments breathed by all, high or low,
and found comfort. Only, the wits of the agitated capital--who perceive
some, but by no means all, of the opportunities which their
fellow-citizens afford them--took occasion to read this text with the
punctuation-mark--(.) _point_--after each noble word. _Point_ is also
the strongest of negations, so that the official declaration of faith
was reduced to nullity,--"Liberty, none; Equality, none: Fraternity, not
the slightest!"

All this seems to constitute a curious national trait, and in
literature, in the daily journals, the observing traveller is again
impressed with this unbosoming, which the Parisian himself would
probably brand as _naivete_ if he could perceive it. It flourishes
perfectly side by side with his vanity; in fact, it probably has its
origin in his vanity. "The Causes of Our Defeat in 1870," under various
titles, have furnished and are still furnishing matter for interminable
publication. In municipal affairs, the unshakable conviction that Paris
is, simply, the only capital in the world does not in the least
interfere with frank admissions concerning its limitations, which the
least public-spirited villager in other climes would neither believe nor
admit. Here, the journalist, the romancer, the historian, find in the
most simple human demonstration, if it take place in the capital,
something peculiarly and most admirably _Parisien_. Balzac, _e.g._, in
the _Double Famille_, if we remember aright, brings two of his
characters together late at night in a dusky street; the younger man
thinks he recognizes the elder, but is not certain; he therefore
approaches him doubtfully "as a Parisian does when he is undecided."
This endless and childish delight in everything appertaining to his
town, and the accompanying frank indifference to everything, pretty
much, outside of it, is, in fact, so well known abroad that it has even
brought down upon the Parisian's unconscious head the epithet that he
would consider the uttermost of insults--"provincial!" He provincial! he
who has invented those two withering words, "the provinces" and
"bourgeois."

Nevertheless, this capital of all possible civilizations does not
hesitate to admit that it must by all means do all in its power to
attract the we