On a bitter afternoon in the last week of January of the year 1923 the writer found himself in the Place Vendôme in Paris. Now here, in the Place Vendôme, is material ready to the hand of the as yet undiscovered chronicler of lofty frivolities: such, unfortunately, as am not. But I can, at least, count up to fifty. There were forty-eight motor-cars in the Place Vendôme, and one coach-and-six. The Place Vendôme is a paradox in grey stone. Spacious, noble, monumental, it is cast, even at the stranger’s first glance, in an everlasting mould. The Place Vendôme is, without a doubt, one among the few things about which we may say with certainty: “That will last.” And yet, monumental and everlasting though it is, what do we find in the Place Vendôme? Do we find therein the practice of the seven arts, the learning of the nine humanities, the study of any one among the august array of sciences, nay, the application of any one among the Ten Commandments? We do not. We find forty-eight motor-cars and one coach-and-six. We find that it is given over only to the frivolities of the trivial of two worlds and to every sort of “high-minded depravity” that may occur to the enfeebled wits of the exquisite. We find, in other words, that the Place Vendôme is the centre of that floating population of a few thousand dressing-tables, sables and Cachets Faivre of which, under the lofty title of _l’aristocratie internationale_, the Chevalier Gilulio di Risotto is the ultimate servitor. The Place Vendôme is, therefore, no place for a plain man, nor by any means a safe station for the man in the street: there are motor-cars kept in readiness to run them over. Across the Place, from the rue de la Paix to the rue de Castiglione, dash for ever the nimble green Citroën taxicabs; whilst from the rue de Castiglione to the rue de la Paix will march the Renaults _de luxe_ with scarlet wheels, passing in a fancy of cool brown eyes and the _poudre à la maréchale_ of Bourbon days. Here and there among them, maybe, will flash the racing Bugattis of the dark young men a _giggolo_, a _rastaqouère_, a “racingman.” They will come to no good. And always the great column on which Napoleon stands rises to the clouds, but no one cares about that. All they care about are the forty-eight automobiles and one coach-and-six which stretch, in ordered array of two lines, from the foot of his column to the entrance of the Ritz. The shops are loaded with diamonds as large as carnations and with carnations as expensive as diamonds. The shop-keepers are very polite, and courteously do not mind how many you buy. Americans buy. Englishmen watch the Americans buying. Grand Dukes wait for the Englishmen to dare them to have a cocktail. A few Frenchmen are stationed at those strategic points where they can best be rude to the English and Americans. Then the English and Americans tip them. The women do not wear stays, and insist on their men shaving twice a day.