Under the new Empire, Paris saw itself almost transformed by the opening of wide and direct avenues of communication, the suppression of gloomy and insalubrious quarters, the completion of the Louvre, the construction of the Halles, the erection of churches, schools, mairies, and the laying out of public gardens and promenades. Six hundred kilomètres of sewers were provided for the drainage of the capital, and the Bois de Boulogne and de Vincennes greatly embellished. The working-classes were still disturbed by vague discussions over social questions, and by souvenirs of the Republic; but the bourgeoisie, enriched by the public security and liberty of trade, desired only the continuance of order and a somewhat more liberal administration of public affairs. The condition of many parts of the city, as revealed by a number of official investigations after the Revolution of 1848, was indeed deplorable. "A third only of the working-classes live under conditions approaching hygienic ones, the remainder are in a frightful state; forty thousand men and six thousand women are lodged in Paris in furnished houses which are for the greater part nothing but damp hovels, scarcely ventilated, badly kept, containing chambers in which are eight or ten beds pressed one against another, and in which several persons sleep together in the same bed." The immediate effects of the opening of Baron Haussmann's magnificent new boulevards were in many cases disastrous for the workmen and for the poorer classes, who found themselves compelled, by the destruction of their old lodgings, and the increase in rents and daily expenses, to seek shelter in the suburbs, and in the _quartiers eccentriques_; the Expositions Universelles also served to increase permanently the cost of living, as they have always done since, and in other cities than Paris. On the other hand, the cost of clothing was considerably diminished, and the workingman was never so well arrayed as in the first years of the Second Empire.