Paris: With Pen and Pencil: Its People and Literature, Its Life and BusinessBartlett, D. W. (David W.)
History
Paris: With Pen and Pencil: Its People and Literature, Its Life and Business
Bartlett, D. W. (David W.)
Paris (France) -- Description and travel; Paris (France) -- Social life and customs
Getting lost after midnight in one of the narrow streets of Paris, is
not particularly pleasant, especially if every person you meet looks
like a thief. The police system of Paris is in one respect far more
strict than that of London--in political matters. Every stranger, or
native, suspected in the least of tendencies to republicanism, is
continually watched and dogged wherever he moves. While in Paris, my
whereabouts was constantly known to the police, and though I made
several changes in my abode, I was followed each time, and my address
taken; yet I was but an in offensive republican from America. A man must
be careful to whom he talks of French despots, or despotism. For
speaking against Louis Napoleon in an omnibus, a Frenchman was sentenced
to two years imprisonment, and men have been exiled for a less offense.
The police are everywhere to detect conspiracy or radicalism, but are
more slack in reference to the safety of people in the streets.
One pleasant feature of Paris is its great number of baths, public and
private. The artisan who has little money to spare can go to the Seine
any day, and for six cents take a bath under a large net roofing. A
gentleman, to be sure, would hardly like to try such a place, but the
working people are not particular. It is cheap, and in the hot weather
it is a great luxury to bathe, to say nothing of the necessity of the
thing. To take a bath in a first-rate French hotel is quite another
matter. Every luxury will be afforded, and the price will be quite as
high as the bath is luxurious.
Pleasure trips are getting to be quite common in France, in imitation of
the English, on a majority of the railways. The fares for these pleasure
trips are very much reduced. I noticed the walls one day covered with
advertisements of a pleasure trip to Havre and back for only seven
francs. The second and third class carriages on the French railroads are
quite comfortable, but the first are very luxurious. Trains run from
Paris to all parts of the country, at almost all hours of the day and
night.
PUBLIC INSTITUTIONS.
There is no city in the world so blessed with educational institutions
of the first class as Paris, and no government fosters the arts and
sciences to such an extent as the French government, whether under the
administration of king, president, or emperor. The government constantly
rewards discoveries, holds out prizes to students and men of genius. The
educational colleges are without number, and the lectures are free.
There is one compliment which the stranger is forced to pay the French
government--it encourages a republicanism among men of genius in
learning, the arts and sciences, if it does put its heel upon the
slightest tendency toward political republicanism.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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