The plot proceeds: the daughter of the orangewoman now appears. She is clad in the same preposterous habiliments. As the niece of the minister, she is created a princess, (those things are cheap in Italy,) and she, too, is in love with the officer in the tie-wig. She recognises the song of Zerline, "Achetez mes belles oranges," and sings the half of it. On this, the mother and daughter now recognise each other. It is impossible to go further in such a _denouement_. If Italian operas are proverbially silly, we are to recollect that this is not an Italian, but a French one; and that it is by the most popular comic writer of France. The marriage of Gemma and Rodolf is forbidden by the pride of the King's sister, the wife of Boccanera, but Zerline interposes, reminds her of the orange _affair_, threatens her with the discovery of the billet-doux, and finally makes her give her consent: and thus the curtain drops. I grew tired of all this insipidity, and left the theatre before the catastrophe. The music seemed to me fitting for the plot--neither better nor worse; and I made my escape with right good-will from the clamour and crash of the orchestra, and from the loves and _faux pas_ of the belles of Palermo. _The Obelisk._--I strayed into the Place de la Concorde, beyond comparison the finest _space_ in Paris. I cannot call it a square, nor does it equal in animation the Boulevard; but in the _profusion_ of noble architecture it has no rival in Paris, nor in Europe. _Vive la Despotisme!_ every inch of it is owing to Monarchy. Republics build nothing, if we except prisons and workhouses. They are proverbially squalid, bitter, and beggarly. What has America, with all her boasting, ever built, but a warehouse or a conventicle? The Roman Republic, after seven hundred years' existence, remained a collection hovels till an Emperor faced them with marble. If Athens exhibited her universal talents in the splendour of her architecture, we must recollect that Pericles was her _master_ through life--as substantially _despotic_, by the aid of the populace, as an Asiatic king by his guards; and recollect, also, that an action of damages was brought against him for "wasting the public money on the Parthenon," the glory of Athens in every succeeding age. Louis Quatorze, Napoleon, and Louis Philippe--two openly, and the third secretly, as despotic as the Sultan--were the true builders of Paris.