_August 5th._--I had intended seeing some of the sights to-day--so accordingly, after breakfast, mounted on Nelly, cigar in mouth, and followed by my smart orderly, Fitzgerald, I paraded slowly through the village, crossed the fields to St Denis, having passed which I had already got over half the dreary road to La Chapelle, when Nelly suddenly fell dead lame. Upon examination we found a great nail which had run into her foot (off hind), between the frog and bars. This put an end to my day. So I returned quietly, put the mule into the stable with Cossack and the brown horse, Nelly into the mule’s box, sent to St Denis for Mr Coward, who is veterinary surgeon to our division, made Farrier Price meantime pare her sole almost to the quick, put on a bran poultice, and have at last sat down to amuse myself by scribbling something about Paris--observations, description, or what else it may be. To proceed, then. I shall not soon forget my first ride to Paris from Colombes. Although already noticed in its place, I like to dwell on a subject to me of so much pleasure, and shall ever recall with emotion my feelings on first passing the Barrière de l’Etoile and gaining a _coup d’œil_ of the magnificent avenue beyond, terminated by the venerable palace of the French monarch--its noble trees, its crowds of carriages, horsemen and footmen, and all the _et ceteras_ of such a scene. Arriving by this side, the head filled with preconceived ideas of filthy narrow streets without _trottoirs_, what was my surprise on passing through the Place Louis Quinze and entering the magnificent Rue Royale. My previous knowledge of Paris, picked up in books of travel, &c., has all proved erroneous. Some travellers are extravagant in its praise; but I think the greater part have dwelt too much on the dark side of the picture, otherwise why these unfavourable impressions that occupied my brain? The natives, on the contrary, are too extravagant in its praise; and knowing their gasconading style, one is slow to believe their highly-coloured descriptions, and particularly their saying, “Qui n’a vû Paris, n’a rien vû”--a sentiment now become a proverb with them. But this same, or something very similar, is said of many other cities, if I mistake not--Vienna, Rome, Naples, Florence, Madrid, Lisbon, &c. However, like everything else, this has two sides--both parties are right, both are wrong. In the same manner as any other city, Paris has its clean and its dirty quarters, its St Giles and its Grosvenor Street, its fine and its mean buildings, its poverty and its opulence--in short, its _agrémens_ and its _désagrémens_. I can’t translate these words. Agreeables and disagreeables won’t quite do. Everything depends on the good or bad humour of the traveller, or the reception he meets with in the country he undertakes to describe. It generally, therefore, is either a Pays de Cocagne or a Tierra del Fuego.