Identifier: parisasseendescr00sing (find matches)
Title: Paris as seen and described by famous writers ..
Year: 1900 (1900s)
Authors: Singleton, Esther, (from old catalog) ed. and tr
Subjects:
Publisher: New York, Dodd, Mead & co.
Contributing Library: The Library of Congress
Digitizing Sponsor: The Library of Congress

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evard changes its name as it docs its character. Thereare various kingdoms separated by a brook that separatesthem as profoundly as an ocean divides two empires.From one side to the other, mariners and population, habitsand inhabitants, everything differs. The Boulevard has ex-isted scarcely sixty years. Sixty years ago (in 1800) it started from a prison and cameout in a desert. To-day, on the ruins of the prison the Geniusof Liberty spreads its wings of gold, and the desert is anelegant quarter. It traced a line across an uninhabited re-gion, full of sloughs and puddles, covered with boards,dotted with wooden shanties and ambushed by footpadswho infested the lonely district. To-day it is a macadamroad—macadam is the last word of civilization for artificialmud !—given up to horsemen and carriages; a fine row oftrees, that are cut down at every revolution and replantedon the morrow; a wide bitumen path for pedestrians, andtwo long avenues of monumental houses, Parisian life has 226
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LES BOULEVARDS 227 been transferred more and more from the Seine to theBoulevard in proportion as money has dominated the no-bility, and the Chaussee-dAntin has conquered the aristo-cratic faubourg. When the Boulevard had inherited the Palais Royal, thepolice closing its games and driving away the women,its fortune thenceforth was assured; it became the rallyingpoint of the globe, the forum where, under the grey skies,all tongues, known and unknown, are spoken; the bazaarof free flesh, where all the races of the world come to bejudged on sample; the kingdom of saunterers, the centreof business, the rendezvous of pleasure, the hearth of inac-tivity, the paradise of loitering, and everybodys highway.It is there that in troublous times the muttering riot and thesuccessful revolution take place; when better days return itis also the Capitoline Way along which serene Peace con-ducts the triumph of emperors and kings. Stay for an houron the path in front of the Maison dOr, or on Tortonisste

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