The surrounding scenery of Paris is unimaginably enchanting. Luckily for themselves, and unluckily for the fastidious dreamers, the people have spoiled all this beauty with their gingerbread fairs, their rowdy diversions, their feasts and improprieties. Bougival is given over to ladies of indecorous habits and their fugitive mates, Asnières is now a place where fast men take women at war with respectability and virtue to dwell at ease, so that these pretty resorts are closed to the puritan holiday maker. If you have not lived in the neighbourhood of a French fair for the traditional three weeks of its duration, you cannot understand to what extent a nation or a city may be martyrised for the pleasure of its people. The clamour of diverse sounds begins at ten A.M. and ends only at one A.M., fifteen hours later. There are the roars of the wild beasts, the tambour beating outside each booth at intervals, the whiz and whistle of the merry-go-rounds, the frightful music of the dancing halls, each repeating without intermission the same airs and all simultaneously, so that you hear the waltz of Faust, of Mme. Angot, the jingle of the _Danse du Ventre_, and polkas and marches in a maddening mingle. Add to this the uninterrupted popping of guns, and the shouting of the booth proprietors, and you have all the elements of an inferno never imagined by Dante. To complain were idle. The people are taking their pleasures, and the people must live. So the world of fashion, when a fair comes its way as it does at Neuilly, makes the best of it with the good-humoured philosophy of France, and goes down into its midst. At the fair of Neuilly it is the _chic_ thing for the elegant diners to attend in evening dress, and admire the pugilist, the lions and tigers, the merry-go-rounds, and the exhibitions of the tents.