This excessive price has had the natural result of curtailing the use of electricity as an illuminator; and the usual thrifty habits of the French householder and municipality contribute to make the capital anything but a well-lighted city at night,--contrary to the general impression. The stranger who leaves the main boulevards and enters any of the minor streets, even such a wide and important one as the Boulevard Saint-Germain, is struck with the village darkness of these thoroughfares. Not only is there no other means of illumination generally but the street-lamps burning gas, which are sufficiently widely spaced,--and, in the case of the boulevard just mentioned, masked by trees,--but all the house-fronts are tightly closed and as black as night. One may cross the Place Vendôme, five minutes from the Opéra, in the middle of the evening in the middle of the season, and have barely light enough to avoid other pedestrians. All around the great circle the houses show no gleam of light in their windows, with two or three exceptions, and the effect is anything but cheerful. In this Place, as in so many localities in Paris, the pedestrians take to the middle of the streets,--in the wide thoroughfares, to cross them, or to avoid détours, and in the narrow ones, because of the insufficiency of sidewalks,--and good eyesight becomes of the utmost importance. Fortunately, the cabs and carriages all carry double lanterns, and even the bicyclers, those terrors to foot-passengers, are compelled to show a light of some kind and to sound some kind of warning. Of these, the neat and efficient little lantern and the bell fixed to the handle-bar are not yet in general use,--the French cycler mounts any kind of a lamp, even a paper Venetian lantern, on the front of his machine, and rings a tea-bell, or sounds a small horn, as he dashes along. If he display no consideration whatever for the pedestrian, he, in turn, perils his own neck with the utmost willingness, and the risks he takes in the narrow and crowded streets, and the coolness and skill with which he avoids the fate he so justly deserves, are equally remarkable.