Paris gets rich, though at the expense of individual Parisians. I will
try and explain. The average luxury is enormously increased even in my
experience; what were once considered refinements and fopperies are now
called necessary comforts. Prices are risen enormously, house-rent
doubled within the last five or six years; all articles of luxury are
very much dearer; the very gloves I wear cost twenty per cent more than I
used to pay for gloves of the same quality. How the people we meet live,
and live so well, is an enigma that would defy AEdipus if AEdipus were
not a Parisian. But the main explanation is this: speculation and
commerce, with the facilities given to all investments, have really
opened more numerous and more rapid ways to fortune than were known a few
years ago.

"Crowds are thus attracted to Paris, resolved to venture a small capital
in the hope of a large one; they live on that capital, not on their
income, as gamesters do. There is an idea among us that it is necessary
to seem rich in order to become rich. Thus there is a general
extravagance and profusion. English milords marvel at our splendour.
Those who, while spending their capital as their income, fail in their
schemes of fortune, after one, two, three, or four years, vanish. What
becomes of them, I know no more than I do what becomes of the old moons.
Their place is immediately supplied by new candidates. Paris is thus
kept perennially sumptuous and splendid by the gold it engulfs. But then
some men succeed,--succeed prodigiously, preternaturally; they make
colossal fortunes, which are magnificently expended. They set an example
of show and pomp, which is of course the more contagious because so many
men say, 'The other day those millionnaires were as poor as we are; they
never economized; why should we?' Paris is thus doubly enriched,--by the
fortunes it swallows up, and by the fortunes it casts up; the last being
always reproductive, and the first never lost except to the individuals."