The Paris we have rapidly surveyed is, mainly, enclosed by the inner boulevards, which correspond to the ramparts of Louis XIII. on the north demolished by his successor between 1676 and 1707, and the line of the Philip Augustus wall and the Boulevard St. Germain on the south. Beyond this historic area are the outer boulevards which mark the octroi wall of Louis XVI.; further yet are the Thiers wall and fortifications of 1841. Within these wider boundaries is the greater Paris of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, of profound concern to the economical and social student, but of minor interest to the ordinary traveller. The vogue of the brilliant and gay inner boulevards of the north bank so familiar to the foreigner in Paris is of comparatively recent growth. In the early nineteenth century the boulevard from the Place de la Madeleine to the Rue Cambon was almost deserted by day and dangerous by night--a vast waste, the proceeds of the confiscated lands of the Filles de la Conception. About the same time the fashionable cafés were migrating from the Palais Royal to the Boulevard des Italiens, south of which was built the Theatre of the Comédie Italienne, afterwards known as the Opéra Comique. Its façade was turned away from the boulevard lest the susceptible artists should be confounded with the ordinary "comediens of the boulevard." From the Boulevard Montmartre to the Boulevard St. Martin followed lines of private hotels, villas, gardens and convent walls. A great mound which separated the Boulevard St. Martin from the Boulevard du Temple still existed, and was not cleared away until 1853. From 1760 to 1862 the Boulevard du Temple was a centre of pleasure and amusement, where charming suburban houses and pretty gardens alternated with cheap restaurants, hotels, theatres, cafés, marionette shows, circuses, tight-rope dancers, waxworks, and cafés-chantants. In 1835, so lurid were the dramas played there, that the boulevard was popularly known as the _Boulevard du Crime_. But the expression of the dramatic and musical genius and social life of the Parisians in their higher forms is of sufficient importance to merit a concluding chapter. CHAPTER XX THE COMÉDIE FRANÇAISE--THE OPÉRA--SOME FAMOUS CAFÉS--CONCLUSION