following pages. He has, I think, depicted with remarkable accuracy and
artistic skill the many varying effects of colour that are produced
as the climbing sun casts its early beams on the giant larder and its
masses of food--effects of colour which, to quote a famous saying of the
first Napoleon, show that "the markets of Paris are the Louvre of the
people" in more senses than one.

The reader will bear in mind that the period dealt with by the author
in this work is that of 1857-60, when the new Halles Centrales were
yet young, and indeed not altogether complete. Still, although many old
landmarks have long since been swept away, the picture of life in all
essential particulars remained the same. Prior to 1860 the limits of
Paris were the so-called _boulevards exterieurs_, from which a girdle of
suburbs, such as Montmartre, Belleville, Passy, and Montrouge, extended
to the fortifications; and the population of the city was then only
1,400,000 souls. Some of the figures which will be found scattered
through M. Zola's work must therefore be taken as applying entirely to
the past.

Nowadays the amount of business transacted at the Halles has very
largely increased, in spite of the multiplication of district markets.
Paris seems to have an insatiable appetite, though, on the other hand,
its cuisine is fast becoming all simplicity. To my thinking, few more
remarkable changes have come over the Parisians of recent years than
this change of diet. One by one great restaurants, formerly renowned for
particular dishes and special wines, have been compelled through lack
of custom to close their doors; and this has not been caused so much by
inability to defray the cost of high feeding as by inability to indulge
in it with impunity in a physical sense. In fact, Paris has become a
city of impaired digestions, which nowadays seek the simplicity without