; story was piled upon story; they shot up like any
comprest liquid, and each tried to lift its head above its neighbors
in order to obtain a little fresh air. The streets became deeper and
deeper, and narrower and narrower; every vacant place was covered and
disappeared. The houses at length overleapt the wall of Philip
Augustus, and merrily scattered themselves at random over the plain,
like prisoners who had made their escape. There they sat themselves
down at their ease and carved themselves gardens out of the fields. So
early as 1367 the suburbs of the city had spread so far as to need a
fresh enclosure, especially on the right bank; this was built for it
by Charles V. But a place like Paris is perpetually increasing. It is
such cities alone that become capitals of countries. They are
reservoirs into which all the geographical, political, moral, and
intellectual channels of a country, all the natural inclined planes of
its population discharge themselves; wells of civilization, if we may
be allowed the expression, and drains also, where all that constitutes
the sap, the life, the soul of the nation, is incessantly collecting
and filtering, drop by drop, age by age.

The enclosure of Charles V consequently shared the same fate as that
of Philip Augustus. So early as the conclusion of the fifteenth
century it was overtaken, passed, and the suburbs kept traveling
onward. In the sixteenth it seemed very visibly receding more and more
into the ancient city, so rapidly did the new town thicken on the
other side of it. Thus, so far back as the fifteenth century, to come
down no further, Paris had already worn out the three concentric
circles of walls which, from the time of Julian the Apostate, lay in
embryo, if I may be allowed the expression, in the Grand and Petit
Chatelets. The mighty city had successively burst its four mural
belts, like a growing boy bursting the garments made for him a year
ago. Under Louis XI there were still to be seen ruined towers of the
ancient enclosures, rising at intervals above the sea of houses, like
the tops of hills from amid an inundation, like the archipelagos of
old Paris submerged beneath the new....

Each of these great divisions of Paris was, as we have observed, a
city, but a city too special to be complete, a city which could not do
without the two others. Thus they had three totally different aspects.
The City, properly so called, abounded in churches; the Ville
contained the