His hatred of the _bourgeois_--the "man in the street"--in spite of, and indeed because of, his being a potential client, is expressed at every yard. He constantly tries to run them down, which makes strangers to Paris accuse the Paris cabman of driving badly, while in point of fact he is not driving at all, but playing with miraculous skill a game of his own.... The cabman's wild career through the streets, the constant waving and slashing of his pitiless whip, his madcap _hurtlements_ and collisions, the frenzied gesticulations which he exchanges with his "fare," the panic-stricken flight of the agonized women whose lives he has endangered; the ugly rushes which the public occasionally make at him with a view to lynching him, the sprawlings and fallings of his maddened, hysterical, starving horse, contribute as much as anything to the spasmodic intensity, the electric blue-fire diablerie, which are characteristic of the general movement of Paris.[7] [7] Rowland Strong, _The Sensations of Paris_. No doubt the hansom-cab--the gondola of London as some one termed it--would have survived if it had accepted the limitations of the taximeter, but refusing to adjust itself to circumstance its numbers steadily diminished. Among the omnibuses and taxis of both types and the numerous private motor-cars there passes at all times of the day a wonderful stream of country vehicles. Vegetables are conspicuous, but these might be overlooked, whereas the hay and straw carts assail the eye by their immense proportions. They might almost be dubbed lazy men's loads, for they have the appearance of moving hay-stacks and require the most skilful manoeuvring in the midst of so much impetuously driven traffic. These country carts almost give the streets of Paris a provincial flavour, their horses and drivers being more essentially rural than anything one sees in London, even in the neighbourhood of Covent Garden. Riding quietly through the wheeled traffic the sight of half a dozen members of the semi-military _Garde republicaine_ is a very familiar one. Their uniforms are so military in character that visitors to Paris generally mistake them for soldiers.