And so the ladies stroll westward to the famous Giroux (where you can buy, an it please you, toys at forty guineas each--babies that cry, and call "mamma," and automata to whom the advancement of science and art has given all the obnoxious faculties of an unruly child), or east to the boulevards, which are known the wide world over, at least by name, the Boulevards de la Madeleine, des Capucines, des Italiens, Montmartre. These make up the heart and soul of Paris. Within the limits of these gorgeous lines of shops and _cafes_ luxury has concentrated all her blandishments and wiles. This is the earthly heaven of the Parisians. Here all the celebrities air themselves. Here are the Opera stars, the lights of literature, the chiefs of art, the dandies of the Jockey Club, the prominent spendthrifts and eccentrics of the day. About four o'clock in the afternoon all the known Paris figures are lounging upon the asphaltum within this charmed space. Within this limit--where the Frenchman deploys all his seductive, and vain, and frivolous airs; where he wears his best clothes and his best manners; where he loves to be seen, and observed, and saluted--the tradesmen of the capital have installed establishments the costliness and elaborateness of which it is hardly possible to exaggerate. The gilding and the mirrors, the marbles and the bronze, the myriad lamps of every fantastic form, the quaint and daring designs for shop fronts, the infinite arts employed to "set off" goods, and the surprising, never-ceasing varieties of art-manufacture--whether in chocolate or the popular Algerian onyx--bewilder strangers. Does successful Mr. Brown, who, having doffed the apron of trade, considers it due to himself to become--so far as money can operate the strange transformation--a _fine fleur_; does he desire also to make of plain, homely Mrs. Brown a leader of fashion and a model of expensive elegance?--here are all the appliances and means in abundance. Within these enchanted lines Madame B. may be made "beautiful for ever!" Every appetite, every variety of whim, the cravings of the gourmet and the dreams of the sybarite, may be gratified to the utmost. A spendthrift might spend a handsome patrimony within these limits, nor, at the end of his time, would he call to mind a taste he had not been able to gratify.