Numerous equipages with liveried attendants driving about or waiting at the doors. Numberless loungers sauntering up and down, or philandering in the shops, a striking feature among these the foreign officers, particularly English, all indicating the Rue de Richelieu as the focus of fashionable resort. After all, however, there is something about this as well as all the other streets of Paris, with a few exceptions--such as the Rue de Rivoli, de la Concorde, de la Paix, and some part of the Boulevard--that displeases an Englishman’s eye and nose. The buildings in general have a worn and shabby appearance; their great height, and the narrowness of the thoroughfare, throws a degree of darkness and gloom over everything; but, above all, the olfactory nerves are continually offended by a certain pervading odour, difficult to be accounted for, since it is everywhere the same--not arising from any visible cause, but omnipresent and unvarying. In the Rue de Richelieu not all the fragrant odours issuing from that _magazin_ of odours, the Cloche d’Or, and fifty others, were sufficient to overpower this most unsavoury of smells. It may be said to characterise Paris--to stamp it as the sulphureous city. My attention was attracted by a broad avenue crossing one end of it, and along which flowed a dense and continuous stream of passengers and carriages. I directed my horse’s head thither, and in a few minutes found myself in the Boulevard des Italiens. The excitement and interest of that moment will not soon be forgotten. The breadth of the street, the mixture of trees and houses, the number and variety of the immense multitude moving on, all contributed for a moment to electrify me, and I should have forgotten Colombes and the lateness of the hour had not Hitchins at that moment rode up and asked me if I was not going home to dinner. Colombes and M. Ferdinando’s good cheer regained their sway, and we trotted off together, vowing an early return to explore the wonders of this mine of novelty and excitement. CHAPTER XIX.