Many have been the problems faced by France since the Franco-Prussian war. Political adjustment has been of first importance, of course, but Paris has had her own questions to answer, and, because of her cosmopolitanism, her solutions have been of interest to the whole world. Much time and thought have been spent on the repairs required by the excesses of the communists. The rebuilding of the City Hall on the same spot on which it had stood for five hundred years and in the style which Francis I initiated three centuries before, was a task on which Paris lavished thought and money. The exterior is a finely harmonious example of renaissance. The mural paintings of the interior are a record of the work of the best French artists of the last quarter of the nineteenth century. They are enhanced by heavily handsome gildings and by chandeliers of glittering crystal. As a whole, however, the city has put more expenditure into the perfecting of public utilities, the beautifying of streets and the construction of parks--works of use to the many--than into the erection of buildings of less general service. The panorama which make the frontispiece of this volume shows the care with which pavements and curbs and tree-guards are ordered. A small tricycle sweeper is 1912’s latest device for removing any last reproach of Lutetia’s mud--a reproach formulated to-day only by Parisians made fastidious by a century of cleanliness. The panorama shows also the arrangement of the quays and the orderliness which makes them possible in the very center of the city, even when there is discharged upon them huge loads of freight brought from the sea by the strings of barges (seen in the picture of the Eiffel Tower opposite page 360) which are moved by a tug and a chain-towing device. In some parts of this city of three million inhabitants the quays disclose scenes that are almost rural. Under the fluttering leaves of a slender tree a rotund housewife is making over a mattress, exchanging witticisms with a near-by vender of little cakes. Not far off the owner of a poodle is engaging his attention while a professional dog clipper is decorating him with an outfit of collar and cuffs calculated to rouse envy in the breasts of less favored _caniches_. When the hero of an old English novel orders his servant to call a “fly” we wonder whether the misnamed vehicle which responds has been christened from the verb or the noun. There is no doubt in Paris as to the origin of the “fly boats” on the Seine. These busy little travelers are of insect origin--they are _bateaux mouches_. What these boats are on the river the _fiacres_ have been on land. These small open carriages [Illustration: HÔTEL DE VILLE.]