Produced by Dagny; and by David Widger Corrected and updated text and HTML PG Editions of the complete 11 volume set may be found at: https://www.gutenberg.org/files/9774/9774.txt https://www.gutenberg.org/cache/epub/9774/pg9774-images.html BOOK VI. "I will bring fire to thee--I reek not of the place." --EURIPIDES: _Andromache_, 214. CHAPTER I. . . . THIS ancient city, How wanton sits she amidst Nature's smiles! . . . Various nations meet, As in the sea, yet not confined in space, But streaming freely through the spacious streets.--YOUNG. . . . His teeth he still did grind, And grimly gnash, threatening revenge in vain.--SPENSER. "PARIS is a delightful place,--that is allowed by all. It is delightful to the young, to the gay, to the idle; to the literary lion, who likes to be petted; to the wiser epicure, who indulges a more justifiable appetite. It is delightful to ladies, who wish to live at their ease, and buy beautiful caps; delightful to philanthropists, who wish for listeners to schemes of colonizing the moon; delightful to the haunters of balls and ballets, and little theatres and superb _cafes_, where men with beards of all sizes and shapes scowl at the English, and involve their intellects in the fascinating game of dominos. For these, and for many others, Paris is delightful. I say nothing against it. But, for my own part, I would rather live in a garret in London than in a palace in the Chaussee d'Antin.--'Chacun a son mauvais gout.' "I don't like the streets, in which I cannot walk but in the kennel; I don't like the shops, that contain nothing except what's at the window; I don't like the houses, like prisons which look upon a courtyard; I don't like the _beaux jardins_, which grow no plants save a Cupid in plaster; I don't like the wood fires, which demand as many _petits soins_ as the women, and which warm no part of one but one's eyelids, I don't like the language, with its strong phrases about nothing, and vibrating like a pendulum between 'rapture' and 'desolation;' I don't like the accent, which one cannot get, without speaking through one's nose; I don't like the eternal fuss and jabber about books without nature, and revolutions without fruit; I have no sympathy with tales that turn on a dead jackass, nor with constitutions that give the ballot to the representatives, and withhold the suffrage from the people; neither have I much faith in that enthusiasm for the _beaux arts_, which shows its produce in execrable music, detestable pictures, abominable sculpture, and a droll something that I believe the _French_ call POETRY. Dancing and cookery,--these are the arts the French excel in, I grant it; and excellent things they are; but oh, England! oh, Germany! you need not be jealous of your rival!"