hinted, pedestrians are not only far less exposed to being
bespattered, but also to having their limbs fractured.

Formerly, a _seigneur de la cour_ conceived himself justified in
suffering his coachman to drive at a mischievous rate; and in narrow,
crowded streets, where there is no foot-pavement, it was extremely
difficult for persons walking to escape the wheels of a great number
of carriages rattling along in this shameful manner. But he who
guided the chariot of a _ministre d'etat_, considered it as a
necessary and distinctive mark of his master's pre-eminence to
_bruler le pave_. This is so strictly true, that, before the
revolution, I have here witnessed repeated accidents of the most
serious nature, resulting from the exercise of this sort of
ministerial privilege: on one occasion particularly, I myself
narrowly escaped unhurt, when a decent, elderly woman was thrown
down, close by my feet, and had both her thighs broken through the
unfeeling wantonness of the coachman of the Baron de Breteuil, at
that time minister for the department of Paris.

Owing to the salutary regulations of the police, the recurrence of
these accidents is now, in a great measure, prevented; and, as the
empirics say in their hand-bills: "_Prevention is better than cure._"

But for these differences, a person who had not seen Paris for some
years, might, unless he were to direct his visits to particular
quarters, cross it from one extremity to the other, without remarking
any change to inform his mind, that here had been a revolution, or
rather that, for the last ten years, this city had been almost one
continual scene of revolutions.