TOMB OF NAPOLEON.
Dr. Max Nordau, the famous author of "Degeneracy," although a German, lives in Paris. I enjoyed my call upon him very much. One quickly recognizes the alertness of his mind, his brilliant powers of generalization and his aptness in epigram. I also had the pleasure of meeting Senator Fougeirol, a noted advocate of bimetallism.
The visitor to Paris is immediately impressed by the magnificence of the city's boulevards, parks and public squares. There is an elegant spaciousness about the boulevards and squares that surpasses anything I have seen elsewhere.
Parisians assert that the Avenue des Champs Elysees is the finest in the world, and so far as my observation goes I am not prepared to dispute the claim. The beauty of Paris deserves all the adjectives that have been lavished upon it.
One might dwell at length upon the almost endless array of brilliant shop windows where jewelry, bric-a-brac, hats, gowns and mantles are displayed (and I am not surprised that Paris is the Mecca for women), but I desire to refer briefly to the more permanent beauty of Paris—the beauty of its architecture, sculpture and paintings.
Paris' public buildings, ancient and modern, combine solidity with beauty. The statues, columns and arches that adorn the parks and boulevards bespeak the skill of the artists and the appreciation of the public which pays for their maintenance.
Paris' many picture galleries, chief of which are the Louvre and the Luxembourg, contain, as all the world knows, extraordinary collections of treasures of art. The encouragement given by the government to every form of art has made Paris the abode of students from the four corners of the earth.
The huge palaces at Versailles and Fontainebleau are interesting relics of the monarchical period, and they are instructive, also, in that they draw a contrast between the days of the empire and the present time. The extremes of society have been drawn closely together by the growth of democracy, and the officials chosen by the people and governing by authority of the people are much nearer to the people who pay the taxes and support the government than the kings who lived in gorgeous palaces and claimed to rule by right divine.
I have left to the last those reminders of earlier France which are connected with the reigns of Napoleon. You cannot visit Paris without being made familiar with the face of the "Little Corsican," for it stares at you from the shop windows and looks down at you from the walls of palaces and galleries.