These places are to the seraglio what the cookshops are to the restaurateurs. At these latter places you are served by a nod. The dish is placed on the table the moment it is ordered. Private rooms offer you everything to satiate gluttony and sensuality. The glasses which decorate them offer to the libidinous eye of an old satyr the charms of his mistress, and all the seats are elastic. There is a private saloon in which you drink the coolest liquors, and where burnt incense escapes from boxes in light cloudy streams. There you dine _à l’Orientale_! and find on certain days all the pomp and singularity of a repast of Trimalcion. On a signal given the ceiling opens, and from above descended heathen goddesses in classical attire. The amateurs choose, and the divinities, not of Olympus, but the ceiling, join the mortals. [Sidenote: GARDEN OF THE PALAIS ROYALE] Such is the infected lazar house, placed in the middle of a great city, which has reduced the whole of society to degradation and corruption. Independently of the fatal contagion of gaming, the excuses of cupidity under all its forms, and the licentiousness of morals, blasphemy and infidelity in every mouth, and at every moment, brutal and depraved language has pervaded every condition and made a sport of sacred words heretofore never pronounced without respect. Everywhere you meet troops of children, without order or modesty, who swear, blaspheme, and scandalise chaste and pious ears. At Sodom and Gomorra they would not have allowed such books to circulate as are printed and sold in the Palais Royale. The infamous work of De Sade,[1] “Justine, or the Misfortunes of Virtue,” is exposed on every stall, and a hundred other productions, equally distinguished for turpitude and vice, are there to finish the decomposition of what instinctive morality remains in the hearts of young people. I cannot help expressing the utmost indignation against the compiler of a publication just issued, entitled, “A Practical Guide, during a journey from London to Paris,” in which the writer asserts “that no station, no age, no temper could leave the Palais Royale without an ardent desire to return.” It is proper the English public should not be thus abused by perversions and falsehoods, and on this account I have entered more fully into a detail of the wanton and disgusting scenes at the Palais Royale than their monstrous enormities would otherwise deserve.