This hollow life,
this perpetual expectation of a pleasure which never comes, this
permanent _ennui_ and emptiness of soul, heart, and mind, the
lassitude of the upper Parisian world, is reproduced on its features,
and stamps its parchment faces, its premature wrinkles, that
physiognomy of the wealthy upon which impotence has set its grimace,
in which gold is mirrored, and whence intelligence has fled.
Such a view of moral Paris proves that physical Paris could not be
other than it is. This coroneted town is like a queen, who, being
always with child, has desires of irresistible fury. Paris is the
crown of the world, a brain which perishes of genius and leads human
civilization; it is a great man, a perpetually creative artist, a
politician with second-sight who must of necessity have wrinkles on
his forehead, the vices of a great man, the fantasies of the artist,
and the politician's disillusions. Its physiognomy suggests the
evolution of good and evil, battle and victory; the moral combat of
'89, the clarion calls of which still re-echo in every corner of the
world; and also the downfall of 1814. Thus this city can no more be
moral, or cordial, or clean, than the engines which impel those proud
leviathans which you admire when they cleave the waves! Is not Paris a
sublime vessel laden with intelligence? Yes, her arms are one of those
oracles which fatality sometimes allows. The _City of Paris_ has her
great mast, all of bronze, carved with victories, and for watchman
--Napoleon.
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