Publisher's Synopsis
One of those sights in which most horror is to be encountered is, surely, the general aspect of theParisian populace-a people fearful to behold, gaunt, yellow, tawny. Is not Paris a vast field inperpetual turmoil from a storm of interests beneath which are whirled along a crop of humanbeings, who are, more often than not, reaped by death, only to be born again as pinched as ever, men whose twisted and contorted faces give out at every pore the instinct, the desire, the poisonswith which their brains are pregnant; not faces so much as masks; masks of weakness, masks ofstrength, masks of misery, masks of joy, masks of hypocrisy; all alike worn and stamped with theindelible signs of a panting cupidity? What is it they want? Gold or pleasure? A few observationsupon the soul of Paris may explain the causes of its cadaverous physiognomy, which has but twoages-youth and decay: youth, wan and colorless; decay, painted to seem young. In looking at thisexcavated people, foreigners, who are not prone to reflection, experience at first a movement ofdisgust towards the capital, that vast workshop of delights, from which, in a short time, they cannoteven extricate themselves, and where they stay willingly to be corrupted. A few words will suffice tojustify physiologically the almost infernal hue of Parisian faces, for it is not in mere sport that Parishas been called a hell. Take the phrase for truth. There all is smoke and fire, everything gleams, crackles, flames, evaporates, dies out, then lights up again, with shooting sparks, and is consumed. Inno other country has life ever been more ardent or acute. The social nature, even in fusion, seems tosay after each completed work: "Pass on to another!" just as Nature says herself. Like Natureherself, this social nature is busied with insects and flowers of a day-ephemeral trifles; and so, too, it throws up fire and flame from its eternal crater. Perhaps, before analyzing the causes which lend aspecial physiognomy to each tribe of this intelligent and mobile nation, the general cause should bepointed out which bleaches and discolors, tints with blue or brown individuals in more or lessdegree.