CHIEF OF THE DEVORANTS



CHAPTER I

MADAME JULES

Certain streets in Paris are as degraded as a man covered with infamy;
also, there are noble streets, streets simply respectable, young
streets on the morality of which the public has not yet formed an
opinion; also cut-throat streets, streets older than the age of the
oldest dowagers, estimable streets, streets always clean, streets
always dirty, working, laboring, and mercantile streets. In short, the
streets of Paris have every human quality, and impress us, by what we
must call their physiognomy, with certain ideas against which we are
defenceless. There are, for instance, streets of a bad neighborhood in
which you could not be induced to live, and streets where you would
willingly take up your abode. Some streets, like the rue Montmartre,
have a charming head, and end in a fish's tail. The rue de la Paix is
a wide street, a fine street, yet it wakens none of those gracefully
noble thoughts which come to an impressible mind in the middle of the
rue Royale, and it certainly lacks the majesty which reigns in the
Place Vendome.

If you walk the streets of the Ile Saint-Louis, do not seek the reason
of the nervous sadness that lays hold upon you save in the solitude of
the spot, the gloomy look of the houses, and the great deserted
mansions. This island, the ghost of _fermiers-generaux_, is the Venice
of Paris. The Place de la Bourse is voluble, busy, degraded; it is