In the hall of the hotel I looked at the plan of Paris. Certainly Pantin seemed to be a very long way off. The route to it from the centre of the city--that is to say, the Place de l'Opera--followed the Rue Lafayette, which is the longest straight thoroughfare in Paris, and then the Rue d'Allemagne, which is a continuation, in the same direct line, of the Rue Lafayette. The suburb lay without the fortifications. The Rue Thiers--every Parisian suburb has its Rue Thiers--was about half a mile past the barrier, on the right. I asked the aged woman who fulfils the functions of hall-porter at the Hotel de Portugal whether a cab would take me to Pantin. "Pantin," she repeated, as she might have said "Timbuctoo." And she called the proprietor. The proprietor also said "Pantin" as he might have said "Timbuctoo," and advised me to take the steam-tram which starts from behind the Opera, to let that carry me as far as it would, and then, arrived in those distant regions, either to find a cab or to walk the remainder of the distance. So, armed, I issued forth, and drove to the tram, and placed myself on the top of the tram. And the tram, after much tooting of horns, set out. Through kilometre after kilometre of gaslit clattering monotony that immense and deafening conveyance took me. There were cafes everywhere, thickly strewn on both sides of the way--at first large and lofty and richly decorated, with vast glazed facades, and manned by waiters in black and white, then gradually growing smaller and less busy. The black and white waiters gave place to men in blouses, and men in blouses gave place to women and girls--short, fat women and girls who gossiped among themselves and to customers. Once we passed a cafe quite deserted save for the waiter and the waitress, who sat, head on arms, side by side, over a table asleep. Then the tram stopped finally, having covered about three miles. There was no sign of a cab. I proceeded on foot. The shops got smaller and dingier; they were filled, apparently, by the families of the proprietors. At length I crossed over a canal--the dreadful quarter of La Villette--and here the street widened out to an immense width, and it was silent and forlorn under the gas-lamps. I hurried under railway bridges, and I saw in the distance great shunting-yards looking grim in their blue hazes of electric light. Then came the city barrier and the octroi, and still the street stretched in front of me, darker now, more mischievous, more obscure. I was in Pantin. At last I descried the white and blue sign of the Rue Thiers. I stood alone in the shadow of high, forbidding houses. All seemed strange and fearsome. Certainly this might still be called Paris, but it was not the Paris known to Englishmen; it was the Paris of Zola, and Zola in a Balzacian mood.