NEW PARIS—BOULEVARD DES ITALIENS.
HOW THE NEW PARIS WAS MADE.
But be it understood that the Baron and the Emperor did not go about this work carelessly. The Baron, whose ancestors were Israelites, had all the thrift of that remarkable race, and Napoleon was not much behind him. Whenever they decided upon tearing down the whole quarter and a score of crooked streets, and constructing a boulevard wider than the widest street in New York, they had an agent who, before the design was made public, went and purchased the entire property at the market rate. Then came the necessary legal steps for the condemnation of the property, and the payment therefor by the city. The new owner was allowed twenty or thirty times for it above what he paid, and vast sums were by this simple process turned into the Emperor’s private exchequer and added to the already vast estate of the astute Baron.
The Emperor used his share of the plunder in amusing the Parisians, but the Baron’s share is still in his family.
There are Tweeds in every country, but these were greater than our great peculator. The Emperor Napoleon and Baron Haussman were just as much greater than Tweed as France is greater than the single city of New York. But then their opportunities were greater. Had Tweed had a chance he might have risen to the front rank.
It is perhaps as well for Paris that it had an Emperor, and possibly it would have been better for the United States had she had a King in her earlier days. For a republic will never do toward the beautifying a city or country what an Emperor will. I helped to elect a member of Congress once, who, finding that a single door in the Capitol at Washington cost twenty thousand dollars, exclaimed against the extravagance of the country. “Why,” said he, “a good two inch pine plank door, painted white, with three coats of paint, can be had in Upper Sandusky for eight dollars, and it would do just as well as this infernal bronze thing covered all over with figures.”
Had Paris been governed by a Congress, the honorable gentlemen from Normandy, and Savoy, and other out-lying districts, would never have paid for the wonderfully beautiful boulevards that make Paris the most beautiful city in the world. The old alleys were good enough for their fathers, and why not for the present generation?
But the will of a single man did it, and the memory of that man is still worshiped in Paris. Dead though he be, he wields power in Paris to-day, and had not his son been so reckless in Africa, the chances are a hundred to one that he would to-day be occupying his father’s throne.
New Paris is made up of beautiful wide boulevards, some of them two hundred feet wide, with sidewalks at least thirty feet wide on either side, and lined with shops and cafés, the shops devoted almost entirely to the sale of articles of luxury.
The cafés are very peculiar. Paris lives, as much as possible, out of doors, for Paris desires to see and be seen. Therefore, in front of every café, under tasteful awnings, are chairs and little white sheet iron tables; there sits Paris, drinking its drinks and eating its light repasts, from early morning till very late at night.